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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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The Neptunian 



r 

OR 



Water Theory 



creation. 

BY' 

REV. J.MiWOODMAN, 

II 

Professor in Natural Science, Chico Academy, Cal. 

Author of " God in Nature and Revelation," " The Song of Cosmology, 

" Star Dates of Human History," " The Song of the Morning 

Stars in Creation's Grand March." 



' ' If they speak not according to thy word it is because 
there is no truth in them" 



San Francisco : 

Bacon & Company, Book and Job 

Corner of Clay and Sansome Strepfs, 

1888. 
&9 










Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year A. D. 1888, 

By J. M. Woodman, 
In the office of the Librarian of Cognress, Washington, D. C 



TABLE OF CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER T. 

Three Theories of Creation Reviewed in the Light 
of Admitted Facts 9 

Section 1. 

The Plutonic or fire theory stated 15 

Centro-centrifugal theory '. . . 16 

Heated Nebulous theory 17 

The increase of heat in mining shafts no evidence of a hot 

center 19 

The admitted sedimentary nature of primitive granite de- 
stroys the Plutonic theory 22 

The theories of metamorphic rock not sustained 23 

Mining shafts increase iniieat according to chemical action 25 

Causes of volcanoes and geysers explained 26 

Geologists dissatisfied with the fire theory. Submarine 

volcanoes 28 

Diatoms found in the earliest stratified rock 31 

Section 2. 

The Neptunian theory stated 32 

All matter created at once in cold gas. God's power need- 
ed to move matter. The first cosmological division. ... 33 
Probable length of it. The first condition of our globe in 
form o 35 

Section 3. 
The facts of science support the Neptunian theory. In 

quantity, order and constituent elements of rock 36 

The three ways that gases combine into rock 37 

How rock can swim in water 38 

Explorations made of the Atlantic 39 



4 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

We once had a hemisphere of land, and one of water 40 

The climate was tropical, as attested by shells, coral, coal, 

and saurians -. 41 

Also by tropical animals, flowers, and tropical vegetation. 42 

Water raised the mountaiDS 45 

Sea bottom seen there 46 

Rise and depressions of earth. Cause of glacial epoch 48 

Such a world physically adapted to man 50 

The accumulating evidence that our earth is essentially a 

ball of water 53 

The reasons the Antediluvians had no rainbow 54 



CHAPTER II. 

The Neptunian Theory was first Brought to Light 
in the Book of Job, dated in the Stars. Epidra- 

matic Oratorio 55 

Orient the place for such a poem 57 

First question established 58 

The indictment against piety amended 59 

The prologue ended with Satan confounded 59 

These persons all representative characters 60 

Starting the drama of history. Piety endures the trials of 

all ages . 61 

Job rewarded on the field. Flood passed 64 

Surrounded by universal idolatry 65 

Certain chapters Messianic 66 

Resurrection reached 68 

The enemies boast of the secular arm of law 69 

The Reformation reached 70 

The voice of space 72 

Dead organic matter, as fossils, speaking 73 

An explanation of the story of Joshua's miracle. The 

three friends silenced. Secular education personified. 75 
True loyal prayer, against unsupported illegal faith, and 

prayer without faith 77 

The Copernican system seen by Job, with the sedimentary 
nature of granite 79 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 5 

The rotundity of Earth with the inside water 81 

The birth-place of ancient icebergs 83 

The telegraph seen and dated 84 

Description of certain fossils 85 

The grand future of the church of the living God 86 



CHAPTER III. 

All the Scripture References to Cosmology are in 
Harmony with the Book of Job. Earth Standing 
in Water. Flood Caused by Overflow of the Sea. 

Once in a Ring of Gases. Above the Waters 87 

Moses gained his first ideas of Creation here 88 

Power born in the hand of God 88 

Gravitation accounts only for centripetal power 89 

A steam world born but not yet swaddled 92 

It is swaddled in gathering and condensing 93 

Tracing gases into rock 95 

To what days the Mosaic time is unadapted 96 

What the Mosaic days of creation do mean 96 

General and Special Providence 99 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Six Days of Moses Full of Scientific Suggestions 
Showing the Work of God to the End of Time 100 

Section 1. 

The work of the first day 10J 

Meaning of deep 102 

Figures of speech. A ring of waters in rluid gases first 

called firmament 103 

These days are not literal 104 

Section 2. 

The work of the second day 105 

Meaning of create. Must be read in the light of scientific 
facts 107 



6 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Moses' point of observation. First firmament tangible 107 

Moses, in vision, confined to the history of our globe. The 
history of other planets not given 109 

Section 3. 

The work of the third day. The steam world commences 

to liquify 110 

The scientific problem of a probable pole-changing solved. 112 

One end only in sunshine 112 

Why it did not rain on the earth 113 

The cause of the first chilled climate. When it turned to 
torrid 115 

Section 4. 

The account of the fourth day in figure of metonymy 116 

Recent coal periods 119 

Section 5. 

The work of the fifth day. Contrasts are found in the sea, 

diatoms begin in the Gneiss rock 121 

The whale of the Miocene is the contrasting animal, as 

morning. 122 

The order of the existence of animals by Moses agrees with 

facts 123 

Science and the Bible claim substantially the same thing 

in reference to Special Providence 125 

Section 6. 

The work of the sixth day. Beasts are the evening. Man 
is the morning 127 

Our race sprang from Adam 128 

The cleansing of the air was essential to the introduction 
of man 129 

Recent volcanoes argue the correctness of the Mosaic ac- 
count 130 

We have not even yet reached the climax of good breath- 
ing 132 



INTRODUCTION. 



The question as to what kind of reading shall 
yield us the most exquisite enjoyment, largely 
depends upon our ability for self-development. 
Taste in reading, as in eating, is often an educa" 
ted faculty. The relish that we now have for 
many kinds of food, we had to acquire. We all 
have faculties for intellectual, moral and spirit- 
ual enjoyment, in lines of thought corresponding. 
These must be developed by use. Eeader, you 
have the ability, if you will allow it to be devel- 
oped, of enjoying a perusal of this sublime sub- 
ject. Mere sensational reading like emotional re- 
ligion has its field of enjoyment, its rills of happi- 
ness ; but it is changeable and uncertain. Songs 
of praise and devotional reading have a higher 
place in the human soul, lasting in their nature. 
Observation and historical research open an- 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

other field of enjoyment. Language and loca- 
tion of places may become a passion in the mind. 
The study of causes in nature, at best but sec- 
ondary, may hold the mind in a sweet revery of 
delight; but these are mere rills of comfort com- 
pared to an open sea, to the ability of reading 
and comprehending first causes, in the light of 
prophetic declarations. 

We are thrilled in the presence of relics of an- 
cient history. The sight of a mummy, known 
to be an ancient person of historic note thrills us 
with admiration and agreeable wonder, as in the 
case of Rameses II. Three thousand years seems 
a long time ; yet it is easy to obtain almost any 
where a fossil, fish or shell, representing as many 
million of years. No where else are the " Foot- 
prints" of God so plain, measuring the long ages 
of time, as seen in the Bible. 

The fact that you have not been accustomed 
to read on this subject is no reason why you 
should not begin at once, and experience the in- 



INTRODUCTION. V 

creased reverence for God, the captivating en- 
gagement of thought, and the exquisite enjoy- 
ment of soul, as a result. Do you still ask what 
practical benefit will this knowledge be to you ? 
Let us rather ask what harm will come from a 
general impression that the cosmological utter- 
ances of the Bible are so tangled up in a network 
of scientific suppositions, as to cause even good 
men to drop them, as parts of God's inspiration 
to man. Such results are already produced all 
over the land. 

The Bible has been assailed on its cosmolog- 
ical sayings. Shall it be defended ? If you are 
so fortunate as to be entrenched in the belief 
of the inspiration of the Scriptures, while you 
are unable to give a reason for the hope with- 
in, your friends may not be so fortunate. Your 
children, it may be, will return from school, in. 
tent upon showing you the discrepancies with 
the established teachings of science. If these 
things are, as they purport to be, given by inspi- 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

ration of God, they can never be made to har- 
monize with an illogical and untruthful cosmol- 
ogy. How important, then, that we should have 
the right theory. 

The disciples of Jesus were asked, " Have any 
of the rulers of the Jews believed on him ? " 
Perhaps before you purchase you ask, Have any 
men of scientific notoriety endorsed these views ? 
Of the many scores of good words given by ed- 
itors, lawyers, doctors, ministers, teachers, and 
professors in colleges, I have room only for a few. 
Prof. David Swing of Chicago said: " The Nep- 
tunian theory of creation, as presented in Dr. 
Woodman's book, is the most logical presenta- 
tion of cosmology that I ever read. He writes 
in a calm and truthful style." The late Prof. 
Norton of the Cal. State Normal said : " You 
have chosen an opportune time for the presen- 
tation of your book, for the theories of cosmology 
are on the eve of a mighty revolution, in which 
the water theory is likely to come to the front." 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

Prof. Reid, President of the State University, 
said : " The subject, as you present it, is wonder- 
fully in accordance with what we see in Nature ; 
and it is still more wonderful that you should 
find it so beautifully set forth in the Bible." 
Prof. LeConte, of the same University, said : 
46 Your theory is a wide departure from every- 
thing hitherto written upon the subject. I will 
say this of it; it accounts for more unexplained 
phenomena than any theory before presented. I 
will give you this item, which I know to be cor- 
rect. The Magnolia tree in the Tertiary period, 
grew and blossomed as far as 80 degrees north." 
Numerous bodies of clergymen have endorsed 
the theory as a just and beautiful presentation 
of Scripture ; many as the " only theory with 
which Moses' Genesis of Creation can be recon- 
ciled." The say-so of others may satisfy the 
indolent and careless, but to enjoy the subject 
you must read and digest these grand truths for 
yourself. 



CHAPTFR I. 

Three Theories Reviewed in the Light 
of Scientific Pacts. 

In the study of Nature, aided only by natural 
phenomena, effect, suggesting cause, is every- 
where apparent. These effects variously com- 
pounded point with accuracy only to secondary 
causes. First causes are hidden far behind all 
existing appearances. 

Unaided nature leaves man to seek first causes 
only by hypotheses. As might be expected, on 
the same subject scientists widely differ in theo- 
ry. Such reasoning must ever leavea large mar- 
gin for opinion. 

Notwithstanding the uncertainty of all such 
modes of reasoning, still that hypothesis must 
ever possess the greatest weight, that best ac- 
cords with the largest number of existing; facts. 
Reasoning a priori, from the providing care of 



14 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

nature's God, as seen in stores of coal, oil, iron, 
copper, and various kinds of precious metals, we 
might reasonably conclude that he who created 
the intellectual as well as the religious nature in 
man would carefully provide for the full gratifica- 
tion of both. Knowing God's nature, reason 
would surest that what is wanting in nature 
must somewhere be supplied by special reve- 
lation of God. 

The book of nature coupled with the Bible 
would be a necessity ; not only for a complete 
worship, but for a full cosmology. We should 
expect the two volumes, when rightly rendered, 
to correspond. A noted atheistical lecturer up- 
on cosmical changes stated in a series of lectures 
in Chico, Cal., that the " Bible theory of creation 
is decidedly watery. By the statements of this 
book, we should conclude that the center itself is 
one vast body of water, holding upon its bosom 
a crust of earth." As a believer in the Plutonic 
theory, and having no reverence for the Bible, he 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 15 

added, " What fool does not know better?" What 
he gave as a " Bible Theory," we will assume as 
a scientific hypothesis; and rest the proof of the 
same upon the facts in nature which scientists, in 
advocating the Plutonic theory, have given us. 

It will be the object of this chapter to show 
that the more recently developed facts in geology 
point unmistakably to the Neptunian theory of 
Creation. This will be done by comparing the 
three theories, and each with lines of facts which 
have been well established. It will be necessary 

Section 1, 

To State the Plutonic Theory 
of the Schools. 

1. That all matter existed, or was created in 
a primeval state of heat. One hypothesis is, that 
all matter of our system was concentrated in one 
heated ball as a central sun. 

2. That planets are portions of this matter, 



16 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

thrown off by a rapid rotary motion of the sun. 
Properly named, this theory was the centro-cen- 
trifugal theory, now quite out of date. That 
this theory might be true, the sun must have turn- 
ed upon its axis with a velocity sufficient not only 
to destroy gravitation at its surface, now twenty- 
seven times that of the Earth, but with a force 
capable of throwing Jupiter, fourteen hundred 
timesthe size of the Earth, out intospace four hun- 
dredand seventy-five million of miles, and Neptune 
over two billion of miles. When we consider that 
our sun now turns on its axis only once in twen- 
ty-seven days, we conclude that a vivid imag- 
ination must have supplied the machinery necess- 
ary for such astounding results in the very face 
of forbidding facts. This theory made no pro- 
vision for the encircling waters, sufficient to 
wrap the entire surface of the globe three miles 
deep, nor for the enveloping atmosphere. Grad- 
ually this ancient theory has been modulated into 
the Nebulous Theory. 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 17 

3. The more popular teaching of today is, 
that matter existed in a highly heated state in the 
form of a diffused cloud. Steel, in his " Four- 
teen Weeks in Geology," suggests that "'From 
unknown causes, this cloud-matter began to re- 
volve about a center or sun. This nucleus drew 
matter direct to itself from all parts of our sys- 
tem. Other portions revolving were thrown off, 
and formed new centers for planetary gathering, 
as they respectively took up their orbicular march 
about the sun. This fiery mist is supposed to 
have come together in a heated state. The plan- 
ets, at least, have since been cooling, though as 
yet having but a thin crust. To this theory of 
primeval heat,, in some form, all our text books 
conform. A theory so long and so universally 
accepted might be supposed to have some solid 
facts upon which to rest. But really it has 
less to sustain it than had the Ptolemaic theory of 
Astronomy : that, at least, had observation in its 
favor, but this fails even here. It is a curious 



18 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

circumstance in this guess work of results, that 
whether heat is made to increase on an average 
one degree in fifty feet, as given by many geolo- 
gists, or one degree in one hundred feet, as given 
by others, precisely the same results are reached, 
viz., fifty miles crust, and intensely heated matter 
beyond. This assumption is based upon the sup- 
posed fact that the internal heat traverses the 
rock by conduction. If this were true, then the 
degree of heat gained in any one hundred feet of 
rock, as you descend into the Earth's crust, 
would be the approximate measurement of any 
other hundred feet in the same shaft; but the re- 
verse of this is true. No two measurements seem 
to be alike. The miner, as a practical geologist, 
in this regard knows that this heat is generally 
caused by chemical action of the rock upon which 
you have let in air or water, or both. This heat 
is found to vary according to nature of the rock 
which you expose. If the rock is rich in pyrites 
of iron or lime, in any of its numerous forms, 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 19 

then disintegration is abundant and much heat is 
generated ; but, on the other hand, where all 
disintegrating elements are wanting, there is no 
perceptible increase of heat. 

4. The theory of the continued increase of 
heat, according to the ratio noticed as you sink a 
shaft a few hundred feet into the Earth's crust, 
if it proves anything proves too much, and is 
therefore false. Experiments extensively made 
in the Virginia mines of Nevada, and particular- 
ly in the Foreman Shaft, show the increase to 
be very uneven ; differing from one degree in 
twelve feet to one in two hundred feet. It even 
grows colder as you descend some kind of rock, 
a degree in one hundred feet. The degree of 
heat is always regulated and gauged by the rock 
you pass. If the rock will disintegrate readily, 
it gives out more heat ; but if the rock may lie 
exposed in the sun and rain without disintegration, 
it throws out no heat in the shaft. Yet from ex- 
periments made in the Foreman Shaft, notwith- 



20 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

standing these varieties of rock, yet at the 2,100 
foot level it is found that the average increase is 
one degree in twelve feet. At this rate, at twentv- 
five miles towards the center you would encounter 
heat above 4,300 deg. Fahr. Chemists will ad- 
mit that, after due allowance for pressure at such 
a depth, yet the granite with all known substances 
would fuse at this heat. The Plutonic hypothe- 
sis makes the crust in Nevada less than twenty- 
five miles, perhaps the weakest on the continent. 

Experiments in Mexico, upon this line of rea- 
soning, would make the crust twice as thick. Now 
from a well established law in philosophy, a press- 
ure upon liquid on the inside of a cylinder im- 
parts its pressure to every part of the cylinder at 
the same time. A pressure capable of breaking 
the crust in any place should, at least, cause all 
the openings to emit lava at the same time. But 
this is not the historic action of volcanoes ; one 
emits while another sleeps. 

It is a historic fact observed within the present 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 21 

century, that a volcanic mountain rose up from* a 
comparatively level plane in Mexico, in one night, 
to the height of 1,695 feet. On the assumption 
that lava comes from the center of the earth, why 
should not the above pressure have found the 
weaker crust, and Nevada have been the place of 
eruption instead of Mexico ? and why should not 
the three hundred open vents of Earth have emit- 
ted lava at the same time ? The theory will not 
bear philosophic tests. 

The Russian report of the increase of heat is 
only one-fourth that given in Nevada. Who be- 
lieves, therefore, that the crust there is four times 
as thick as in Nevada ? The whole subject shows 
that the increase of heat in the shaft proves noth- 
ing as to the interior of Earth, and nothing as to 
the thickness of its crust. 

5. To establish the Plutonic theory, it is at 
least necessary to demonstrate that the granite, 
which all hold to be the under rock, is the un- 
stratified Plutonic foundation of all stratified rock. 



22 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

Recent facts have demonstrated that the granite 
is a sedimentary rock, or rock deposited in water. 
This being admitted, although contradicting the 
teachings of all the older text books, some writ- 
ers, among them is Steel, in order to harmonize 
the Plutonic theory with these stubborn facts, 
have assumed that the primitive granite, which 
by the theory must have been trap or lava, has all 
been worn away by disintegration of water and 
ice, or both ; and again, by water deposited as we 
now find it. But what was a white-hot globe of 
lava doing, while water and ice were tearing and 
grinding its lower crust to pow r dered sand? We 
have secondary granite, but its structure is very 
different from primitive granite. Besides contain- 
ing hard pebbles and boulders of other stone, it 
is friable, and easily disintegrated under exposure. 
It is a bad theory that is driven to such unheard- 
of suppositions for its support. Nothing is more 
evident, if the granite is the under rock, and sed- 
imentary, as represented and known to be, than 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 23 

that the Plutonic theory is completely without 
foundation. 

6. The modern theory of metamorphic rock, 
occasioned by internal heat, is also false. This 
theory maintains that the granite, slates, and mar- 
ble existed so near to the great body of internal 
heat that they must have been metamorphosed. 
Facts demonstrate that these rocks, as a rule, were 
never in heat equal to 700 deg. Fahr. Such a 
heat will readily disintegrate any of these forma- 
tions. Any one can demonstrate this by melting 
a little lead upon a piece of slate, marble, or gran- 
ite. The furnace is found to be the best general 
test of the origin of rock. Lava, having been in 
a melted state, will not disintegrate up to the melt- 
ing point, but, as a rule, will readily melt at the 
white heat. Granite, the slates, marble, and rock 
in general, of a sedimentary formation, will dis- 
integrate at a comparatively low heat, but they 
will not melt, except with alkaloids, or flux, and 
then only at a very high degree of heat. This 



24 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

test shows all the primitive rock, including inject- 
ed seams, to have been formed in the sea, with 
no heat to change their structure since. There 
are a few exceptions to the rule of disintegration, 
as clay rock. 

7. If the granite were not sedimentary, we 
could not account for the great quantity of sedi- 
mentary rock this side. Among the authors of 
our text books there seems to be a general vague- 
ness concerning the origin of stratified rock, ex- 
cept in regard to coal, which all admit came out 
of the air. If we should assume that the granite 
was lava, but all the stratified rock since, until 
you reach the region of conglomerate, came from 
the air, how shall we account for the close simi- 
larity in appearance and structure of the gneiss 
and granite? Theory has piled thirty or forty 
miles of this sedimentary, stratified rock above 
the granite ; whence did it come ? Any openings 
in the granite would let up only lava. Whence 
the material for sediment? We shall, farther on, 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 25 

show that ali primitive rock, like the coal, came 
from the gases of the atmosphere once envelop- 
ing this globe. 

8. Our best scientists now readily unite with 
the keen sighted miner in accounting; for this in- 
crease of heat as you pass down the shaft, on 
entirely different principles from those stated in 
the text books. Prof. Joseph Le Conte says that 
" Chemical action of air and water upon the 
rock, as you descend into the Earth's crust, is 
undoubtedly the cause of the increase of heat." 
Again he says, " This heat is regulated and 
gauged by the constituents of the rock that you 
pass." Now admitting that the rock, as a rule, 
would show an average increase of heat down to 
the Carboniferous system, or even to the Devon- 
ian, yet there is rock enough beyond that con- 
tains so much less carbon, as to show such a de- 
crease of heat that must more than counteract 
all the increase above. Whether we follow up 
the old hypothesis, with the laws regulating heat 



26 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

by conduction or chemical action, the theory is 
utterly without foundation. The late Prof. Nor- 
ton, of the California State Normal, said in a 
lecture at Pacific Grove, in 1883, " Every living 
geologist that I know of in the world will admit, 
for he knows, that the granite was a sedimentary 
rock." This sentiment of his speech being re- 
ported to Le Conte, he replied, " In this position 
Prof. Norton is undoubtedly right." It is thus 
seen that the Plutonic theory in our text books 
is at variance with modern experiments, and is 
proved to be utterly false. 

9. Volcanoes and geysers were formerly sup- 
posed to settle the question in favor of the old 
theory. The phenomena of both are such as to 
strongly argue against it. Most geysers are 
known to be caused by chemical action of rock. 
We instance those in Hot Spring Valley, Cal., 
near Lassen Buttes. No one, having noticed the 
various colored mud-pots and mounds of pulpy 
rock thrown up by these boiling cauldrons, can 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 27 

come to any other conclusion. A few geysers 
may be exceptions, having been caused by water 
trickling over heated rock in proximity to vol- 
canoes. These prove nothing as to the center of 
the earth, until it can be established that this 
body of lava is in the center of the earth. A 
multitude of facts in connection with volcanic ac- 
tion demonstrate that lava does not proceed from 
a common center. 

A few we will here give. (1.) Lava varies in 
color according to the color of the stratified rock 
found in the vicinity. Thus, between Reno and 
Wadsworth, Nevada, may be seen a red ledge of 
sedimentary rock. Close by are found quantities 
of red lava, being the same shade of red found 
in the sedimentary. Pieces of rock may be seen, 
one side showing the sedimentary strata, and the 
other partially melted. Lava everywhere, prob- 
ably, is only sedimentary rock melted. (2.) 
Volcanic disturbances are local, which they could 
not be if they proceeded from a common center. 



28 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

(3.) The existence of great quantities of ashes, so 
light as to float on the surface of water, argues 
the consumption of some burning material, as of 
coal. Nothing of this would exist in matter that 
had primarily been collected in liquid, and had 
ever been in a fused state. Something must have 
been burning to produce the ashes. (4.) The 
fact of all the great upheavals of plateaus and 
mountains having been this side the Carbonifer- 
ous system of deposit, where the burning mate- 
rial, sufficient to produce volcanic effect, was 
extracted from the air and laid down as rock, 
argues in favor of a power much nearer than 
force, generated from a primeval sea of lava. 
Burning coal as a source of heat, and steam as a 
power, are ample to account for every volcanic 
disturbance, however it may have been modified 
by electric forces. 

10. Most geologists are dissatisfied with the 
fire theory, and are looking about for a revolu- 
tion in the teaching of the science. Professor 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 29 

Norton said, " We are upon the eve of a perfect 
revolution in the science of geology." Agassiz 
said, "The Plutonic theory loses ground as soon 
as brought to scientific tests." Again he uttered 
with decided emphasis, " If the center of our earth 
were molten lava, as hot as represented, a crust 
of rock fifty miles thick would melt, and, in the 
space of a few hours, fall into the great sea." 

A teacher of geology in one of our large col- 
leges, who had just finished a lecture upon the 
Plutonic theory, said, " I have given that theory 
because it is the teaching of all our text-books ; 
but I do not believe it. Many facts now com- 
ing to light show that the Water theory is des- 
tined to come to the front." 

11. The fact that submarine volcanoes hap- 
pen, without letting the ocean into the great sea of 
lava, shows that no such sea is there. But for 
the money and reputation invested in school books 
upon this defunct theory, it would have been, 
before this, consigned to the Plutonic hell of the 



30 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

Greeks, from whence, it is more than probable, it 
originated. 

12. Many admitted facts are utterly inconsis- 
tent with this theory. We will stop to notice but 
two. 

(1.) It is a generally admitted fact, that the en- 
tire land portions of the explored earth, including 
Greenland to the 80th parallel, were either in a 
tropical or semi-tropical climate, from the begin- 
ning of sedimentary rock, up to and far into the 
so-called Alluvium deposit, and even to the his- 
toric age. " The climate of England was warm- 
er than any now known on the earth." Sir Chas. 
Lyell stated, that the only exceptions breaking 
in upon this uniformly warm climate were tem- 
porary changes during the great glacial epochs. 
This uniform heat could not result from the pres- 
ent auxiliary motion of the earth, nor with any 
good reason can we assert that the internal fires 
ever modulated the surface climate so much as one 
degree. Scientists are a unit in affirming that, for 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 31 

the last four thousand years, there has been no 
perceptible influence from this cause, upon our 
climate. A rupture of the earth's crust, and a 
change of pole three thousand miles, and a com- 
plete change of pole-pointing, resulting in our pres- 
ent alternating seasons, has probably happened 
within the " historic age," and probably within 
five thousand years. This could not be upon the 
Plutonic basis. Our earth could not part, and 
swim off upon a globe of melted lava. 

(2.) Diatoms are now known to have existed, 
coequal with the deposit of all stratified rock. 
This is a well verified fact, but utterly inconsist- 
ent with the Plutonic theory. Upon this theory, 
the early crust of Earth must have remained at 
a white heat. Water could not lie upon it at all. 
Hence, both deposits in water and animal life 
would be out of the question. The fact of both, to 
say nothing of the well established fact of the sedi- 
mentary nature of granite, must ever brand the 
theory as contradicting the plain facts of nature. 



32 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

These facts equally refute the more modern no- 
tion of metamorphism of rock. The very waves 
of the sea unite in a chorus with the rocks, " The 
Plutonic foundations of the earth's crust exist only 
in the imagination of man." 



Section 2. 

We will State the Neptunian Theory 
as a Hypothesis. 

1. All matter was created at once, and is cor- 
relative. 

2. In its primary condition it was in cold gas; 
diffused in equilibrium in that portion of space 
now occupied with systems : it follows that grav- 
itation, heat, form, motion and power would in 
this state be wanting. 

3. A power, outside of created matter, must 
transform this substance from the inertia of rest 
to that of motion. No sooner was a center of mat- 
ter gathered, than gravitation acted upon all 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 33 

parts of the universe. The centers of all systems 
must commence at the same time, or one system 
would tend to blend with another, and nature 
would be thrown out of equilibrium. The entire 
period of gathering must have been with rela- 
tive exactness. It follows that, at the beginnino; 
of motion, all matter must be put in motion. Such 
gases as were destined to constitute the sun would 
move directly for it ; and such gases as were des- 
tined for globes would move in a circle around 
the center. Such order must have formed the 
poetic choir of suns, " When the morning stars 
sang together. " 

4. The shaping of systems, sending forth 
light, heat, gravitation and power, may well be 
called the first cosmological division of matter. 
This included the heavens, and prospective plan- 
ets, as yet without form, and floating in a ring of 
chaotic gases. 

5. At the close of this division, our sun had 
been gathered out of a field of space, extending 



34 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

each way more than twenty trillion of miles. 
If these light gases had moved in a straight line 
at the rate of thirty miles per hour, it would 
take ninety million of our years to reach the cen- 
ter. Poetically speaking, there existed a condi- 
tion of matter when force, light, gravitation, mo- 
tion and form were sleeping in the inertia of rest. 
This was followed by a period of motion to and 
about a central sun. Geologically speaking, the 
earth, as yet, had no form. The matter that 
would form planets was all floating in a revolving 
ring about the sun. 

The objective view of this ring, with reference 
to the gathered center, would be a solar firma- 
ment. The fluids above had not yet been separat- 
ed from fluids below, hence the firmanent was 
continuous. Earth, without form, was yet sleep- 
ing in chaos. It awoke in form when a second 
division of matter, with no measured duration as 
yet, had been accomplished. 

6. A vast field of hydrogen united with its 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 35 

equivalent of oxygen ; and, in super-heated steam, 
evolved out into space, and took shape as a globe. 
These divisions antedate geologic time. Geology 
must begin with sedimentary rock. The globe of 
steam must liquify and pass back to the ring, and 
through it toward the sun, In doing so, it took 
an atmosphere with it that shows the source of 
all our rock. When taking its true orbit about 
the sun, it was a vast globe of cold water, hold- 
ing, by gravitation, a dense atmosphere in its em- 
brace, rich in material for submarine rock. For 
a while the deposits were very rapid, and a great 
quantity of pulp of rock was formed, before any 
hardening took place. This accounts for the un- 
stratified condition of granite. All the first rocks 
would be submarine, hidden deep in the sea. 
Nearly eighty miles depth of deposits took place 
before dry land could appear. 

7. Contrasts marked the beginning and close 
of the first two divisions. If we follow this or- 
der in this third division, we must wait until 



36 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

the Devonian forests showed the renewed touch 
of the creative hand, giving life in contrast to in- 
organic matter, w T ith which the globe started into 
form, and took its position as a planet of our 
system. Such is the Neptunian theory in part, 
touching first causes in cosmology. 



Section 3. 

The well established Fact of Science 
look toward, and defend this theory. 

1. In the relative quantities of sedimentary 
and lava rock. By far the greater portion of 
rock of all lands is sedimentary. Lava is the ex- 
ception. If the source of supply is an internal 
sea, 7,880 miles in diameter, the reverse of this 
would most likely be true. 

2. In the relative order of the two kinds of 
rock. Except in very restricted locations, sedi- 
mentary rock is at the bottom, in the middle, and 
at the top of the earth's crust. Lava has never 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 3? 

been found as an integral part of the supposed 
bottom rock. 

3. The constituents of all rock indicate the 
water theory. All rock is known to be a com- 
bination of gases. The coal is admitted to have 
been gathered from the air, through the agency 
of vegetation. There are three ways gases may 
be combined into rock : 

(1.) Through the agency of water alone. Such 
was the primitive granite ; and such are the mod- 
ern stalactites. 

(2.) Through the agency of diatoms living 
in the water. These creatures are absorbents. 
They absorb the minerals of the water, and form 
stone. Such are lime, chalk and coral. 

(3.) They may be absorbed into vegetation, and 
then hidden away in the waters, until changed 
into coal. 

(4.) Sandstone and conglomerate are formed 
from eroded material of other rocks. 

(5.) The melting of sedimentary rock in prox- 



38 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

imity to burning beds of coal has formed the 
lava. 

(6.) Chimneys of rock crossing the lower 
strata, as of quartz and granite, are now known 
to be of water deposit. The word dyke is improp- 
erly applied to them. These circumstances all 
point to a center of water. 

4. The question with many will arise, How 
can rock rest upon water ? The answer is, Upon 
the principle of the compressibility of liquids. 
Water compresses a twentieth part in a thous- 
and atmospheres. Thirty-three feet of water is 
equal to one atmosphere. Thirty-three thousand 
feet would compress one-twentieth part. We have 
a geometrical series, with a ratio of 1.05. In 79J 
miles we have twelve and three-fourths terms. The 
sum of the series will equal 19.127, calling 33,000 
feet one, without compressibility. Now as the aver- 
age rock, under salt water, weighs only one and 
a half times as much as water, we have to multi- 
ply twelve and three-fourths by one and a half 
to get its relative weight. This we find to be 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 39 

19.125. At 79| miles in salt water, the weight 
of water equals rock of the same thickness. As 
rock displaces only its bulk of water, it will swim 
like an egg in strong lye at this depth. 

5. The explorations which have been made 
of the Atlantic ocean go to sustain the Neptunian 
theory. 

(1.) They think that they have established 
the fact that we had a connected land hemisphere, 
and a hemisphere of water. Lieutenant Maury 
made such extensive explorations of its contour 
and bed, as to well nigh demonstrate the above 
position. His report is, that the trough-like ap- 
pearance of its bed, the corresponding walls on 
either side, being nearly perpendicular, showed 
that the continents were once together. On 
either side of the Atlantic the sounding line 
showed a gradual deepening of water for about 
two hundred miles from shore, when suddenly the 
depth became too great for measurement. This 
only confirms what Guizot wrote upon the same 
subject over fifty years ago. 



40 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

In a small treatise he endeavored to prove that 
the continent showed a rent hemisphere of land, 
once altogether. That it had been rent asunder 
by some great convulsion of nature, and by water 
carried away from Africa and Europe, with which 
North and South America were formerly con- 
nected. His theory was, that continents and is- 
lands are but floating remnants of a once con- 
nected hemisphere. 

(2.) Such a rupture could only be maintained 
on the hypothesis of a center of water. Should 
the earth open its crust, letting the ocean into its 
interior of melted lava, it would resemble a 
bomb. 

6. We shall, therefore, assume that we had a 
land hemisphere, and that the north pole was in 
the center, and pointed directly to the sun through- 
out its entire orbit. This would involve the fact 
that the south half of the globe was in darkness, 
and locked in ice, as a great Antartic sea. 

(1.) We argue this from the widely extended 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 41 

remains of the polyp-builders. This animalcule 
inhabits only warm waters. His remains are 
found widely distributed in every zone from the 
Lower Silurian up. Iowa and Minnesota show 
as nice coral in their strata as is now found in the 
torrid seas. 

(2.) From the widely scattered remains of 
tropical shells. They conclusively show that a 
warm ocean once covered the continents. Sir 
Chas. Lyell mentions the tropical nature of the 
shells about England and Labrador, and that 
"They indicate a very warm climate, more uni- 
formly warm than any now existing on the 
Earth." 

(3.) From the remains of saurians ; such as 
the icthyosaurus, which, like the crocodile of the 
Ganges, is found only in warm waters. Darwin 
saw one in the bank of the La Plata. No land 
is without their remains. 

(4.) From the widely spread coal beds of 
Earth. Nothing in geology is better established, 



42 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

than that this is the product of tropical forests. 
All countries boast of their coal veins. Anthra- 
cite coal is often found in the frozen rocks of 
Greenland. A vein of the best coal, ten feet 
thick, was found in Nova Zembla, now covered 
with ice. Good coal is also found in the north- 
ern part of Alaska. A genial climate once cov- 
ered these places. 

(5.) From the remains of tropical animals. 
The evidence is conclusive, that gigantic ele- 
phants in countless herds once roamed the arctic 
regions of Siberia. His remains have been found 
in all lands, except the Scandinavian peninsula. 
The mastodon was his near neighbor, and his 
bones are generally found in the same regions. 
These animals depended on grass for subsistence. 
They could not endure a cold winter, nor live 
where snow lies on the ground for even a short 
time. We now find their remains where snow 
now lies from four to eight months in a year, 
and from two to twenty feet deep. From the 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 43 

region of Russian Siberia alone, more than eighty 
thousand pounds of their ivory have been sold in 
a single year. Whence, then, this warm climate, 
so uniform and general ? It cannot be accounted 
for on internal heat. Heat, sufficient to warm an 
arctic atmosphere, if coming from the ground, 
would destroy all animal life, either of water or 
land. Geologists agree that it has not been af- 
fected so much as one degree for the last four 
thousand years. But we have positive proof that 
these animals existed down to the period of hu- 
man existence. They probably have not been ex- 
terminated five thousand years. Internal heat 
cuts no figure in their existence. Only one hy- 
pothesis accounts for these tropical phenomena, 
viz, a land hemisphere, with pole in the center, 
pointing directly to the sun. 

(6.) The sudden change of climate in some 
past time argues a rapid change in the axillary 
motion of the earth, preceded by a general rup- 
ture of the earth's crust. It was so sudden, that 



44 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

animals were locked up in arctic ice, and have 
been preserved to our day, with flesh entire. 
(See the word Mammoth, W. Dictionary.) The 
change of pole must have been very sudden, or 
animals, slain by the convulsion, would have 
decayed at once. 

(7.) The widely spread tropical flowers and 
fruits sustain this theory. The palm tree flour- 
ished in Europe and Central Asia ; also in the 
northern part of North America. The magno- 
lia blossomed at least 80 degrees north. Sir 
Charles Lyell claims that the earlier vegetation 
was generally tropical. Grass evidently flour- 
ished in all lands, the year round. 

7. The nature and condition of the early 
rock attest the water theory. Had the crust 
begun upon a ball of lava, at a white heat, the 
ocean, readily boiling, would be thrown into 
the air, where it would be condensed, and by 
gravitation thrown back upon the thin crust. 
This would often give way, and the whole vol- 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 45 

ume would enter the interior and explode the 
entire crust into atoms. In such case we should 
expect to find the under rock a broken mass of 
displaced lava. But we find the granite to have 
been so calmly deposited in water, and it retains 
its place so well, that we split it with the rift 
of sugar pine. Geologists estimate the earth's 
crust from fifty to one hundred miles thick. 
Upon the Neptunian theory we at least have 
seventy-five miles without a particle of lava, or 
so much as the scratch of an iceberg. The early 
geologies spoke of dykes of lava, injected into 
granite. The furnace shows these to be water 
seams. No well attested lava has ever been 
found there. 

8. The period of the great upheavals sup- 
ports this theory. No grand mountains reared 
their lofty heads to the clouds, until this side the 
Carboniferous system of deposits. It is more 
probable that burning coal must have been the 
cause of the heat, and the expansion of steam 



46 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

the power, that rent the Earth's crust ; and the 
eighty miles pressure of waters suddenly liber- 
ated would bring up the granite, with all under 
rock, to the surface. Lava then proceeds from 
local deposits of melted rock, that had been 
stratified. If it came from a common center of 
a primary melted mass, there would be no occa- 
sion for ashes. The abundance of these ashes 
shows the consumption of some burning material, 
as of coal. The very witnesses which the Plu- 
tonic believers have placed upon the stand prove 
quite the reverse of their theory. 

9. Facts show that the substance of all 
mountain chains was once deposited in the sea. 
Baron VonHumboldt remarked, " Upon the tall- 
est mountains yet reached by the footsteps of 
man you may witness the ancient sea bottom." 
Conglomerate shells with sand, hardened into 
rock in the ancient seas, are now found in all 
lands thousands of feet above the sea. 

10. The rise and depressions of the Earth's 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 47 

crust are proofs of the water theory. Lands 
having large rivers, carrying more debris or silt 
into the ocean than the weight of her vegetation, 
decaying, are rising ; as has been demonstrated 
in North and South America, Europe, Asia and 
Africa. The terraces left attest the truth of 
this position. 

Lands having more vegetation or ice than the 
weight of the debris carried into the sea are 
sinking. Witness Greenland and the Pacific 
Isles. But these islands could not well sink in- 
to a sea of burning lava, without letting in the 
surrounding ocean ; in which case the entire 
crust would be destroyed. 

11. The crowning reason for believing in the 
Neptunian theory is found in the great glacial 
drift period. The Neptunian hypothesis of the 
poles of the Earth is sufficient to account for 
the ice that constituted the drift. The ancient 
equator would mark the bound between dark- 
ness and light : and would be situated so as to 



48 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

manufacture icebergs the whole length of this 
largest circle. 

The depressions of the lowlands beneath the 
sea are accounted foe in the great upheavals. 
On an average, rock weighed out of water is 
one and two-thirds times as much as when weigh- 
ed under water. All the strata of mountains 
and plateaus lifted from beneath the waters 
weigh one and two-thirds times what they did 
before being disturbed. 

Geologists tell us that the Earth's crust was 
depressed six to seven thousand feet. This 
would enable the ice to flow over the surface, 
the bergs being of enormous depth. The low- 
lands of every continent have been thus plowed. 
The evidence exists in every valley and far up 
the sides of all mountains. This evidence is by 
no means confined to scratches on the rock, but 
the water-washed gravel and polished pebbles 
equally attest its action. You can hardly sink 
a shaft in valley or hill without encountering 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 49 

them. With the present inclination of the Earth's 
pole to the elliptic no such quantity of ice can 
possibly occur. No iceberg has ever yet been 
seen in tropical waters. There never yet has 
been enough at one time within historic note, 
to counteract the influence of the Gulf Stream 
about Norway and Iceland. 

How different the ancient drift ! Then the 
ice penetrated all open seas, caused by submer- 
gence. It plowed alike the Brazilian moun- 
tains, the Sierra Nevada, and the Appalachian. 
It chilled the seas to the very center of the sub- 
merged hemisphere ; and England witnessed the 
dwelling of the reindeer in her borders, while it 
lasted. According to Sir Chas. Lyell, the tem- 
perature sank from the uniformity of our in- 
tensely warm climate to the chilliness of melt- 
ing ice. The cold was now as uniform as the 
heat had before been constant. The north pole, 
pointing directly to the sun, would bring the 
whole land hemisphere within perpetual sun- 
shine ; and consequently, when above the sea, 



50 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

would be in a tropical or semi-tropical zone to 
the very edge. This climate would continue 
as long as the land could hold back the ice, 
which had been accumulated at the equator. 
But no sooner did the lowlands become sub- 
merged, than the ice would change the climate, 
wherever it could in large quantities accumulate. 
As it plowed every river, plain, and gulch, the 
fauna, adapted to the former climate, would 
naturally lose their existence. Such is the his- 
tory of the drift. Ninety-seven per cent, of all 
land animals died. By the slow process of dis- 
integration of the mountains, the hemisphere was 
again raised, and its former beautiful climate 
restored. 

Section 4. 
How was such a World adapted to Man or 

STRICTLY SPEAKING, MAN TO SUCH A WORLD? 

1. The even climate of such a world would 
tend to his longevity, and be most genial to his 
feelings. 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 51 

Man's nature calls for an even climate. Now 
by art he tries to even up the climate of the 
year. 

(1.) Less than two-thirds of the lighted hem- 
isphere could have been covered with dry land. 
Many bodies of water are known^ to have been 
included within the areas of land. The pole, 
pointing directly toward the sun, must have been 
near Gibraltar. Allowing that land extended 
in every direction, four thousand miles or more, 
we should then have an open sea of from fifteen 
hundred to two thousand miles, intervening be- 
tween the edge of the hemisphere of land, or 
perhaps more properly, the quartosphere of land, 
and the region of perpetual ice. 

(2.) On the sunny side of such a globe, being 
at first entirely water, a rapid evaporation must 
have taken place ; and most, nearest the north 
pole. This would give rise to currents, both of 
air and water, to flow toward it, as a source of 
supply. Counter currents of both would follow. 



52 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

Currents of either starting near the equator 
would be cold and possess a motion greater than 
the earth, a few degrees toward the pole. This 
would send both towards the northeast, until 
meeting the return currents of wind, which 
would cause variable winds ; but a most genial 
climate must have surrounded the earth, at least 
forty degrees wide. 

(3.) Such a climate, with such facilities for 
evaporation, would provide the way for perpetual 
harvest. The open sea to the edge muSt have 
been constantly filled with floating ice. Cold 
breezes, often laden with thick fog, would float in 
over the edge of the land. This may account 
for the long hair which covered the mammoth 
elephant of Siberia and California. No winds 
are more penetrating than those coming from 
large bodies of melting ice ; yet under a perpetual 
sunshine the vegetation must have been abun- 
dant. 

2. We add by way of recapitulation : 



SUPPORTED BY FACTS OF SCIENCE. 53 

(1.) That everywhere, and with each new 
discovery in science, the evidence is accumulat- 
ing that our globe is essentially an immense ball 
of cold water, with a crust of earth covering the 
under waters as with a stone ; while a portion 
of water above is held in the earth's lap. 

(2.) Until recently, the continents and islands 
were together in one vast body, with the axil- 
lary center pointing to the sun. 

(3.) That fragments of the broken hemis- 
phere have been spread out upon the seas, often 
standing with just their tops out of water as 
islands. 

(4.) Inasmuch as this Earth is a magnet, the 
deposit about the pole was of the nature of a 
load-stone. This existed as a mountain, which 
by the force of the waters was bodily removed 
to the present north, nearly three thousand 
miles. It was thus we had a change of times 
and seasons. 

(5.) That the alternation of day and night, 



54 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY. 

heat and cold, summer and winter, seed-time and 
harvest, are results following this great change 
in the Earth's polarity. 

(6.) That the existence of the rainbow, 
caused by the declination of the sun toward the 
horizon in the Earth's present motion, is a re- 
minder of what is, and will remain to be, in con- 
trast to what was, and would have been, until 
the end of time, had no cause occurred mak- 
ing it necessary for this radical change. 

Earth's climate was changed, 

(a) By changing the magnetic currents of 
Earth, in removing the pole locally three thous- 
and miles away. 

(&) By withdrawing the attraction the for- 
mer pole had for the sun, and pointing it to an 
empty place in the north, now one degree and 
a half from Polaris. 

(c) By inclining the Earth's pole twenty- 
three and a half degrees to the ecliptic. "He 
changeth times and seasons." 



CHAPTER II. 

The Neptunian Theory of Creation was 

first brought to llgiit in the 

Book of Job. 

1. Like Homer, who dated his poem in the 
rising of the star Sirius, so Job dated his book 
in the Pleiades, while the sun was gaining his 
vernal equinox in the star Alcyone of this constel- 
lation. The Septuagint speaks of Job's age at 
the commencement of his trial as being one hun- 
dred years. By the closing statement appended 
to his book, we learn that he lived after his res- 
toration one hundred and forty years. This 
makes his age two hundred and forty at his 
death. Alcyone marks by precession of the 
equinoxes 2100 years B. C. The great period 
of his longevity indicates a time antedating 
Abraham's day by more than two hundred 
vears. 



56 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

2. This book is an epi-dramatic Oratorio of 
human history. It is epic, in that it gives the 
history of a real life ; dramatic, in that it drama- 
tizes human history, by the inspirations of these 
actors, with the religious intuitions of all ages. 
The poem as a whole shows the contending forces 
that develop character ; the struggle of man's 
redeemed nature against the tendencies of a se- 
ries of degenerate ages, as far down as the full 
triumph of Christ's reign ; followed by the long 
prosperity that awaits the Church. It also sets 
forth the longings of the human intellect for a 
knowledge of first causes ; and its crowning suc- 
cess when Nature is studied in connection with 
the revelations of God's Word. The Book of 
Job was evidently the only Scripture that the 
world had for at least eight hundred years. The 
introduction shows Job to have been a person 
adapted to great reverses of fortune, rich, pious, 
prosperous, happy, and respected. Two spirits, 
either of which may take form, but neither being 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 57 

dependent on form or locality, are present in 
their religious gatherings as they have ever been 
in ours. That objective figures come before our 
imaginations in reading this part of the poem, 
only shows the high character of the production. 

3. The first question between God and Satan 
is that hackneyed one of all history, viz : Is piety 
a selfish ebullition of the human heart or a divine- 
ly planted principle ? Satan takes the first state- 
ment, God the latter Satan affirms that a sudden 
reverse of fortune will change the aspect of Job's 
piety, and he will then curse God to his face. 
Great principles are best tested by suffering. 
Nor is it necessary that every one should suffer in 
the same direction to show forth the same. The 
world is full of delegated suffering ; the few for 
the many, and sometimes one for all. Job is the 
right man in wealth, station, influence, and habits 
of mind to personify piety in its relation to the 
world's progress. 

4. The Orient is the place, and that period of 



58 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

the world the time, for the rich figures of speech 
found in the two scenes of this unparalleled pro- 
duction. Of the two forces meeting us in life, in- 
viting our attention and co-operation, one must 
and but one can, at the same time, receive our 
homage. The one inclines you to and gives you 
credit for all good ; the other inclines you from 
and gives you no credit for any good. The 
princely man of the Orient is suddenly confronted 
with absolute bankruptcy and bereavement of all 
his children, without the chance of speaking the 
parting good-bye. Satan expected the question 
settled in his favor, by a sudden outburst of pas- 
sion, in vindictive hate to. God. But listen ! 
" Naked camel out of my mother's womb (earth), 
and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, 
and the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the 
name of the Lord." The first scene is ended with 
Satan completely foiled. But, some one might 
say, the question only covered Job's outward 
prosperity. True, his wife is left to him, but she 
is a part of himself. 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 59 

5. Again the sons of God are together in wor- 
ship. Satan begs leave to amend his indictment 
against piety. "Touch his bone and his flesh 
and he will curse thee." Job is smitten in a man- 
ner calculated to break down his patience. The 
patience of his wife having become exhausted, 
she is influenced to give her vindictive advice in 
the line of Satan's desires, " Curse God, and 
die." "Thou speakest as a foolish woman. 
What ! shall we receive good at the hand of 
God, and shall we not receive evil ? " 

6. The prologue of scene second ends with 
Satan confounded. The incoming circumstances 
show God's present proposition to be that true 
piety will not only endure, without tarnish, what 
Satan in his ill will has proposed, but it will sur- 
vive and develop in strength in the ages to come, 
until it shall triumph over every foe. To refute 
all satanic charges to which history will give 
rise, God proposes to try it in this person, under 
the leading intuitions governing the masses of all 



60 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

ages, past and to come. Three supposed but mis- 
taken friends hear of Job's calamity, and resolve 
to condole his misery. These are ranked within 
the family of God's sons. These men are kings 
in their time, and are supposed to be entitled to 
a hearing. Their mistakes will make them really 
Job's enemies. Such are the coadjutors that 
Satan is about to have brought to his aid. They 
find Job in keen anguish of body, incapable of 
recognizing his friends. 

7. These persons are all representative char- 
acters, whose intuitions will partake of the nature 
of the epochs of human history, through which 
the prophet Job is about to be taken. Job per- 
sonifies piety ; Eliphaz, reverence in tradition ; 
Bildad, special Providence as a rule of action ; 
Zophar, ignorance, the mother of devotion. Be- 
ginning with the fall of man, each epoch of human 
history is to stamp the prevailing religious intui- 
tions of the masses upon these men. 

8. Piety must be tried under all. Until the 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 61 

enlightened age of the world is reached, piety- 
will have little to cling to but faith in God, and 
that in the face of appearances. Such is the 
drama about to be enacted. Six grand epochs of 
historic time must be passed to reach even the 
present time. (1.) Deism of the antediluvian 
world. (2.) Special Providence as a rule of 
action following the flood, and out of which grew 
the building of the Tower of Babel. (3.) He 
was left alone through materialistic worship in 
idolatry, as in Abraham's time. (4.) He was 
confronted by a superstitious looking-behind, as 
in Persia's time. (5.) Tempted with an abnor- 
mal ambition, as in Alexander's time. (6.) He 
must be surrounded by the ruling necessities of 
commercial selfishness inaugurated by Rome, and 
transmitted by circumstantial links in the progress 
of civilization to our own time. 

9. Human history in the drama starts in with 
a wail. Job, with the intuitions of a deist, be- 
wails his very existence. As he looks to the fu- 



62 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

ture there is not one ray of hope. " Thou (God) 
shalt search for me in the morning but I shall not 
be. He that goeth down to the grave shall come 
up no more." 

Where now is that oft repeated declaration of 
Satan, that piety, at best, is only a selfish looking 
forward to rewards in the future ? The piety of 
Job survives this terrible ordeal. The blinding 
intellectual fog of deism could not lose his point 
of compass. 

Creeds may be good as sign-boards directing 
the traveler, but they go but a little ways in de- 
termining the action of the truly pious. As he 
approaches the flood he beholds the " numbering 
of man's days on the earth. 7 ' And, as the reality 
bursts upon his vision, he experiences a perfect 
revolution of intuition. All is special Providence 
now. 

10. The flood is passed in chapter eight, and 
" man's days become as a shadow." The law of 
God's natural Providence, in cause and effect, 



\/jk FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 63 

is by Job and his friends completely ignored. 
His own condition will look him in the face with 
terrible effect, asking an explanation. To such 
an ordeal, with Bildad framing an enthusiastic 
argument upon the evidences of special Provi- 
dence in the affliction, was Job brought. He 
can logically prove Job to be one of the worst of 
men. "Doth God pervert judgment? " To Job 
he saith, " If thou wast pure and upright, surely 
now he would awake for thee." Job with his 
intuitions cannot see why the argument is not 
sound. " I know it is so of a truth." To work 
thus upon the nerves of a sick man, who has been 
shut off from comprehensive views of God's gen- 
eral Providence in law, is well calculated to break 
him down in impatience toward God. But Job 
replies, " If I say I am perfect it shall also prove 
me perverse. Though I were perfect, yet would 
I not know my soul ; neither is there any days- 
man betwixt us, that he should lay his hand up- 
on us both." Zophar replied, "Know therefore 



64 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

that God exaoteth of thee less than thine iniq- 
uity deserveth." Job replied, "I could speak 
as you do if I were in your stead. " " Though 
he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Job claims 
an honest integrity of purpose, though denying 
perfection in attainment. 

10. For this noble stand he is rewarded on 
the spot with a prophetic view of what forms the 
first chapter in the " Little Book" of star-dates. 
Tracing time back by the precession of the equi- 
noxes to where the sun crossed its spring equi- 
nox in Orion's belt, he saw the commencement 
of man. Tracing the same line forward to the 
end of our race, where indeed time ends, he 
saw that it rested in Ash or the Great Bear 
(margin) incorrectly translated Arcturus ; new 
version, Great Bear. 

Looking to the same kind of date of his own 
time, he saw the sun crossing the Pleiades. 
Looking at the full inauguration of Christ's 
Kingdom on earth, represented by the termina- 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 65 

tion of Job's own sufferings, he saw the time 
measured in the Summer Solstitial colure going 
from under the Altar. " Thou madest Ash, Ori- 
on and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the 
south. 5 ' Here commences the "Little Book," al- 
uded to so often in prophecy, with four of the 
most important dates of history, but sealed upon 
the back part until the opening of the same by 
the " Lion of the Tribe of Judah" to his serv- 
ant John. Here, perhaps all unconscious of 
their bearings on future history, he is picturing 
in the heavens, and dating by means of the pre- 
cession of the equinoxes, the long periods, revo- 
lutions, changes and triumphs his sufferings were 
to take him, followed by the long prosperity of 
the Church of Christ in the latter day. 

11. Representing the reign of universal idol- 
atry, and consequent ignorance of the masses, 
and preceding the anxious inquiries concerning 
immortality by Confucius, Socrates and Plato, 
Zophar is prepared to fill in his part of the drama. 



66 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

The question of the resurrection is discussed 
in the light of nature, in Chap. 14. He is com- 
pelled to leave it as an open question, only wish- 
ing that it might be true. " Oh that thou would- 
est hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest 
appoint me a set time, and remember me/' He 
nears the time of the general expectation of Mes- 
siah's appearance on earth. 

He closes to allow Zophar, the representative 
of those Scribes and Pharisees in their tradition, 
to speak again. This is found in the fifteenth 
chapter. 

12. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth, in- 
clusive, Job personifies Christ. Hence these 
chapters are Messianic. " They have gaped up- 
on me with their mouth, they have smitten me 
upon the cheek reproachfully. My days are ex- 
tinct, the graves are ready for me. God hath 
delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me 
over into the hands of the wicked. Are there 
not mockers with me ? For thou hast hid their 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 67 

heart from understanding." Many of these sen- 
tences are quoted into the twenty-second psalm, 
recognized by all commentators to be Messianic. 
This Special Providence, as a rule to depend up- 
on, watched Christ on the cross ; it triumphed 
over the fact that God did not deliver him. 

Here it is in prophecy : " The snare is laid for 
him in the ground. It shall devour the strength 
of his skin, even the firstborn of death, it shall 
devour his strength. His confidence shall be 
rooted out of his tabernacle. His remembrance 
shall perish from the earth. He shall be driven 
from light into darkness, and chased out of the 
world. He shall neither have son or nephew 
among his people." Isaiah, quoting the senti- 
timent, asks, " Who shall declare his generation, 
for his life was taken from the earth?" 

The Messianic voice is personified from the 
grave. The grave speaks the facts of history. 
" He hath put my brethren far from me, and my 
acquaintance are verily estranged from me. My 



68 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

kinsfolks have failed, and my familiar friends 
have forgotten me. They whom I loved are 
turned against me. Why do you persecute me 
as God?" In the nineteenth chapter Job has 
reached the resurrection. How changed the 
voice ! " Oh, that my words were now written ! 
Oh, that they were printed in a book ! That 
they were graven with an iron pen, and lead in 
the rock forever." 

13. u For I know that my Eedeemer liveth, 
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon 
the earth. And though after my skin worms de- 
stroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." 
Ignorance is not satisfied with the report u that 
he is risen from the dead." "The triumph of 
the wicked is short. Though his excellency 
mount up to the heavens, yet he shall perish for- 
ever. He shall fly away as' a dream." The days 
of apostolic teaching and suffering passed, Chris- 
tianity debauched by a state religion, ignorance 
again put forth as a dying gasp, a few platitudes 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 69 

in defense of God and against piety. Chap. 20. 
Job answered by referring man's conduct in life 
to a future judgment. Chap. 21. Reverence in 
tradition exhorted Piety to speedy repentance. 
Chaps. 23 and 24. Piety is searching directly 
for the true God. 

14. Special Providence, ignoring law, boast- 
eth of his secular strength. " Is there any num- 
bers of his armies? " Here in the poem civiliza- 
tion reached the dawn of the Reformation. Chap. 
26. It begins in the line of science. The rocks 
begin to speak. " Dead things are formed from 
under the waters." The orbicular motion and 
the present pole-pointing of the Earth, according 
to the Copernican system, is seen. " He stretch- 
eth out the north over the empty place, and 
hangeth the Earth upon nothing." How exactly 
in accordance with the history of scientific re- 
form, that* this knowledge should begin in small 
fragments of truth. A glimpse of the ancient 
pole-pointing is seen. " He hath compassed the 



70 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

waters with bounds, until the day and night come 
to an end " ; or until the end of light begins with 
darkness. He saw the great " change of times 
and seasons " caused by the Noachian flood. 
" He divideth the sea with his power, and by 
his understanding he smiteth through the proud. 
Lo these are parts of his ways ; but how little a 
portion is heard of him ! but the thunder of his 
power who can understand?'' 

15. Job enters upon the Reformation in sci- 
ence with a prophet's view of the desperate ef- 
forts put forth, by scientists of our own period, 
to reach first causes by analytical deduction and 
hypothetical reasoning ; and this unaided by any 
light claiming to come by inspiration of God. 
His harp seemed attuned in the most exquisite 
niceness of poetic finish, to that class of modern 
pretenders who talk of the fullness of nature's 
laws, while they disbelieve in the existence of nat- 
ure's God. He opens the twenty-eighth chapter 
with certain admissions, as to points of knowledge 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 71 

obtainable from phenomena of nature, followed 
by questions suggestive of the paucity of all 
things seen to unfold a true and full cosmology. 
" Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place 
for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of 
the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone." 
Now beholding the futile efforts of Naturalists to 
reach first causes he exclaims, " There is a path 
which no fowl knoweth, and w T hich the vulture's 
eye hath not seen. The lion's whelps have not 
trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it. He 
putteth forth his hand upon the rock ; he over- 
turned the mountains by the roots. He cutteth 
out rivers among the rocks, and his eye sees ev- 
ery precious thing." This and more is freely 
conceded as yielding a grand field for geological 
thought. " But where shall wisdom be found ? 
and where is the place of understanding ? Man 
knoweth not the price thereof, neither is it found 
in the land of the living." Eight here, beholding 
the observations through heaven-pointed lenses, 



72 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

that man may read first causes in the stars, he 
gives the poetic reply of space. " The depth 
saith it is not in me." Now beholding the kin- 
dled expectations in the student of the seas, as he 
traces her ourrents, measures her waves and tides, 
and reaches her deepest deposits, the sea is made 
to report, " It is not with me." But may not 
wealth and position gain it from the schools ? 
He answers : "It cannot be gotten for gold, nei- 
ther shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. 
It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with 
the precious onyx, or the sapphire. The gold and 
the crystal cannot equal it ; and the exchange of 
it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. No men- 
tion shall be made of coral or of pearls ; for the 
price of wisdom is above rubies. The topaz of 
Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be val 
ued with pure gold." 

Disappointed in reading first causes in all these 
resources man still inquires : " Whence then Com- 
eth wisdom, and where is the place of under- 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 73 

standing? Seeing it is hidden from the eyes of 
all living, and kept close from the fowls of the 
air." Let now the dead fossil speak. May not 
the entombed life of forty millions of years open 
up this subject to man ? 

16. Destruction and death say, " We have 
heard the fame thereof with our ears. God un- 
derstandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth 
the place thereof ; for he looketh to the ends of 
the earth, and seeth under the whole heavens, 
to make the weight of the winds, and he weigh- 
eth the waters by measure. When he made a 
decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning 
of the thunder ; then did he see it and declare 
it." But how shall man gain this true wisdom of 
causes? " He that cometh to God must believe 
that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that 
diligently seek him." It is the voice of the Sav- 
iour, he who "walked in the garden." Men 
must be drawn toward God before they can see 
him in his word. " And unto man he said, Be- 



74 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

hold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom ; and 
to depart from evil is understanding." It cannot 
be doubted that more reverence for God, and 
less egotistical trust in self, would greatly aid 
the wisest thinker of the present day. We have 
had altogether too much of that feigned or real 
pity for the Bible, as unfortunate in its allusions 
to science, deserving to be ranked with the su- 
perstitions of the untutored masses of the unlet- 
tered ages. It is true that prophetic allusions 
to scientific subjects are usually poetic, but none 
the less specific and definite for this. These al- 
lusions embody a true objective view, leaving to 
science the task to subjectively work out the true 
condition of things presenting such phenomena. 
Thus prophecy poetized upon the rt Place for 
light, and the home and house for darkness ; and 
the path leading to the bounds between them." 
Scientifically explained, one pole of the Earth 
must have pointed steadily to the sun, leaving 
half the globe in perpetual darkness. 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 75 

17. Joshua is said to have commanded the 
sun and the moon to stand still, and they obeyed 
him. Subjectively rendered the sun went not 
down, during one night, which could have been 
objectively accomplished by a mirage. As this 
would answer the purpose for which the phenom- 
ena is reported, it is highly probable that this is 
all that is meant. Again, God made a firmament. 
But firmaments called heaven are not things 
made. Subjectively rendered, he made a globe, 
from which the visible expanse is seen. These 
figures of speech, and especially the one called 
metonymy, run all through prophetic sayings. 
The heart's willingness to accept the truth is often 
necessary to the intellect's perceiving it. 

18. The Reformation has made some consider- 
able progress, and Job's three mistaken friends 
begin to see their errors, and acknowledge them- 
selves silenced. Job's renewed ability to speak, 
and the readiness with which he handles the 
subject of each passing event, shows that the 



76 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

darkness is passing away, and the teachings of 
these dismal ages are being counteracted. 

19. A far more formidable enemy, in the 
person of Elihu, is about to arise. He represents 
Secular Education, in unbelief of the inspiration 
of God, or the existence of true piety. He 
reasons that all men are essentially alike, im- 
perfect ; that heredity, inclination, education and 
surrounding circumstances account for all the 
difference in men. That Job, having claimed up- 
right intentions before God, has committed a 
grave offence. His God is one of cause. " I 
will fetch my knowledge from afar : he that is 
perfect in knowledge is with thee. My lips shall 
utter knowledge clearly. All flesh shall perish 
together." What is this but infidel Deism? 
How different the expression of the wise man ! 
u Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth up- 
ward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth 
downward to the earth ? " The one is mortal, the 
other immortal. For some cause Job is silent, 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 77 

though again and again challenged to the com- 
bat. Let us apply a little history to the prophetic 
drama. French Atheists, in a convention in 1808, 
put forth eighty-three counts, any one of which 
was claimed sufficient to prove the Bible to be 
uninspired. Sir Charles Lyell, himself a Deist, 
wrote, " Of these counts, not one of them remains 
today. Science has laid them aside as untenable." 
20. We have three distinct views of prayer, 
represented in Bildad, Elihu and Job. Bildad's 
view is, " If deserving, you can have all you ask 
for, without reference to law. All that you 
need is faith to perpetuate the line of miracles." 
Elihu's view was essentially expressed by the 
Professor who threw down the challenge, called 
the prayer gauge. Its substance was, " Prayer 
changes no effect following cause. It cannot 
mitigate the death rate in a hospital." Job's 
position is that prayer may be beneficial when in 
harmony with God's laws. There are three 
realms, viz, physics, mind and spirit. Mind is 



78 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

higher than physics, and, within bounds, rules 
it ; spirit is higher than either, and within 
bounds rules both: that prayer to God, ever 
subject to u Thy will be done, not mine," may 
increase the power of the spirit in man over the 
lower realms of law, thus securing wonderful 
help from God, according to his expressed will 
in law. This does not necessarily involve miracle 
in the answer God gives. It is in harmony with 
the law of the spirit, that God within the spirit 
greatly increases its power over mind and matter. 
This was the secret of Job's power over his 
contestants. This power Elihu denied. Secular 
Education will readily admit that God, by his 
direct power (which is Special Providence), 
created matter, again set it in motion, again gave 
life to portions of it, etc., and then deny that 
God would listen to the cry of his children for 
spiritual or material help. This modern Elihu 
has completely ignored the efforts of God to help 
the would-be scientists to phenomena and prin- 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 79 

ciples, which would link his knowledge of nature 
in happy relation with first causes. Hence in the 
end, like Elihu, he is destined to be completely 
confounded. 

21. Two thousand years ago, science establish- 
ed the Ptolemaic theory of Astronomy. It 
taught it for eighteen hundred years, when the 
Copernican theory forced its way to the front. 
And now, it is evident, the true theory was 
clearly taught in God's first book of Inspiration, 
called Scripture. A few years since, Elihu, as a 
learned professor, would take a piece of granite 
in his hand, and learnedly talk of the crystals 
formed, as it slowly cooled, as the first crust 
formed upon the sea of lava. 

22. Now, the same professor talks to his class 
of the sedimentary nature of the rock, and the 
crystals formed under great pressure in the deep 
sea. Four thousand years ago, the Bible gave 
this knowledge to the world. For some cause, 
Job is reticent while Elihu speaks. He speaks 



80 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY. 

as a " beast of power, rising up out of the 
earth/' But God has something to say as to who 
shall stand in the coming ages. Piety will stand 
up, and God will answer as by the power of 
the whirlwind. Chap. 38. " Gird up now thy 
loins like a man, for I will demand of thee, and 
answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid 
the foundations of the earth ? Declare, if thou 
hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures 
thereof, if thou knowest, or who hath stretched 
the line upon it ? Whereupon are the foundations 
thereof fastened, or who laid the cornerstone 
thereof ? " Marginal reading a made the corner- 
stone to sink." Balancing order, in exact equi- 
pose, is proclaimed in science. " Not one star 
could be spared," say the Solons of Philosophy, 
" without throwing all into the greatest con- 
fusion." The balancing of the primary gases, 
as each sun gathered in the beginning, was seen 
by Job. " When the morning stars sang to- 
gether, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 81 

23. The great under-waters were once impris- 
oned as though shut behind doors. u Or who 
shut up the sea with doors when it brake forth 
as if it had issued out of the womb? " Rotund- 
ity of the Earth is here given with the inside 
water. He saw the young Earth first " clothed 
in a garment of clouds," and " thick darkness 
a swaddling band about it." He saw the "foun- 
dations of the earth breaking up," as the flood in 
Noah's day poured in over the earth. " And 
brake up the decreed place for it," and set new 
" bars and doors." A change of polarity, and 
when it took place, is seen. " Hast thou com- 
manded the morning since thy days, and caused 
the day-spring to know his place, that it might 
take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wick- 
ed might be shaken out of it? " When have the 
wicked been shaken out of it, but when " all 
the fountains of the great deep were broken 
up?" The finishing touch is added to the Co- 
pernican system. u It is turned as clay to the 



82 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

seal." Allusion is made to the clay on the pot- 
ter's wheel rotating to a fixed seal shaping the 
same. In contrast to its present motion, he saw 
a former condition with pole pointing to the sun. 
This was a motion that never exchanged the 
darkness for light, nor light for darkness, but 
both remained stationary. " Where is the way 
where light dwelleth ? and as for darkness, where 
is the place thereof, that thou shouldst take it to 
the bound thereof, and that thou shouldst know 
the paths to the house thereof?" He saw the 
contrasted appearance of the former earth to 
her present contour. " The waters are hid as 
with a stone." Altogether, the land hemisphere 
covered the under-waters ; " and the face of the 
deep is frozen." The face of the deep in the 
southern hemisphere of the ancient earth was 
locked in darkness and perpetual ice. He had 
asked the question, " Out of whose womb came 
the ice ? " Where was it born ? This is one 
of the most perplexing questions in science. 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 83 

24. Where was the ice born that once plowed 
such deep furrows over hill and dale, that 
climbed the rugged mountain, and filled ancient 
river beds with three thousand feet of drift ? In 
vain do you ask where the ice came from that 
scooped out the Yosemite Valley, or laid the 
deep beds of water-washed pebbles along the 
Sierra Nevada mountains. God has answered 
it in giving the ancient polarity, by which the 
mighty deep of one half the globe was covered 
with ice. Again, " Who hath divided a water- 
course for the overflowing of waters, or a way 
for the lightning of the thunder ? " Our earth 
is a magnet. The way of the lightning produces 
spiral effects on plants and cyclones from the 
equator to each pole. The earth being divided, 
forming the Atlantic Ocean, and the pole being 
locally changed on the globe, a new way for the 
lightning is formed. This poem is wonderful for 
its flights of prophetic views. The vision, from 
comprehending the phenomena attending the 



84 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

globe in its antediluvian state, now changes to 
a mode of communication by telegraph of our 
own time. To identify the century in which it 
would appear, he resorted to the third clock of 
the heavens, measured by precession. He noticed 
that beautiful cluster of stars called the Plei- 
ades at the usual time of Zenith measurement, 
in the evening, standing over the January thaw, 
followed in a few days with Orion's belt in the 
same place. At the time of Job's captivity the 
Pleiades rose to the Zenith on the 10th day of 
November. By the slow action of precession 
they have moved eastward, until now they come 
to the Zenith on the second day of January. 
Only eighteen days elapse before Orion's belt 
stands in the Zenith to look down on sealed riv- 
ers, as the thaw is over. 

25. " Canst thou bind the sweet influences of 
the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion ? " The 
time in this poetic allusion is our present century. 
The phenomena seen is employing lightning as a 



FIRST PRESENTED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 85 

messenger. " Canst thou send lightnings that 
they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?" 
Proceeding to give the habits and instincts of a 
few representative animals in natural history, 
Job proposed to sit down and say no more. 

26. But God proposed to gird him for the 
description of two representative fossil animals 
of the Middle and Tertiary ages. For the rul- 
ing king of saurians, he described Ichthyosaurus 
under the title of Leviathan. For the king of 
the Myocene period he described the Megatha- 
reum under the title of Behemoth. God opens 
the understanding of Job's three mistaken friends, 
and makes demands for repentance and repara- 
tion. Job becomes their intercessor. The cap- 
tivity of Piety ends here. The "times of the gen- 
tiles are fulfilled." " The sanctuary is cleansed." 
u Babylon is fallen." " The white horse appears, 
and Jesus reigns King of kings and Lord of 
lords." 

27. Now commences the grandest era of Job's 



86 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY. 

life. It is double in prosperity to all going 
before. The time for its continuance is very 
long. The universal respect that will be shown 
the church, the voluntary contributions in liberal 
free-will offerings, the abundance of peace and 
prosperity, are well diagrammed and set forth in 
the closing events of Job's life. 

Elihu will still talk of the "Twilight of 
Christianity," but faith is looking for the dawn 
of Christ's triumph, when the dragon, "like 
lightning," must " fall from the heavens," and 
nations will hail with joy the reign of righteous- 
ness. 

" Lift up your heads, O ye gates ; and be ye 
lifted up ye everlasting doors ; and the King of 
glory shall come in. 

" Who is this King of glory ? The Lord, strong 
and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. The Lord 
of hosts ; he is the King of glory." 



CHAPTER III. 

All the Scripture References to Cos- 
mology are in Harmony with the 
Book of Job. 

1. Peter must have understood the import 
of this divine poem, when he wrote, "For this 
they are willingly ignorant of, that by the word 
of God the heavens were of old, and the earth 
standing out of the water and in the water." 
So also " The earth, that then was, being over- 
flowed." 

2. So Solomon understood the poem. Per- 
sonifying the eternity of wisdom, under things 
timely, he wrote, " Before the mountains were 
settled, before the hills were brought forth." 
Notice the sedimentary character of the moun- 
tains ! " While as yet he had not made the 
earth (in form). When he prepared the heavens, 



S3 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

I was there ; when he set a compass (circle) 
upon the face of the depth (space)." 

3. The spirit of this poem must have inspired 
the Psalmist, when he ascribed thanks unto 
" Him who stretcheth out the earth above the 
waters." And again, u He hath founded it upon 
the seas, and established it upon the floods." 

4. Moses must have possessed this sublime 
poem in the wilderness. By an easy succession 
of steps, he could find his way back to where 
suns, in gathering, kept time to the marching 
forces of Jehovah, as a well trained choir. 
u When the morning stars sang together." Not 
content here, he sought farther aid of God, and 
swung out into the voids of space, where heat, 
light, force, and gravitation slept in the embrace 
of chaos ; yea, still farther back to when and 
where matter was not. He heard God speak 
matter into existence. It was from this vision he 
wrote, "In the beginning God created the heaven 
and the earth." As it came from the hand of 



UNDERSTOOD BY BIBLE WRITERS. 89 

God, " It was without form, and darkness was 
upon the face of the deep." 

Matter without form is in gas ; and to be in 
equilibrium, it must be equally diffused in all that 
portion of space now containing matter. Inertia 
would incapacitate its moving. Without motion, 
light was impossible ; without centers, gravitation 
had not commenced. Such was matter in the 
darkness of chaos without form, called , night. A 
force from without must overcome Jnertia, and 
give birth to form, light, heat, gravitation, and 
power at the same time. This pow r er is brought 
to our view in the following sublime sentence : 
" And the Spirit of the Lord moved upon the face 
of the waters'' (fluids). Gravitation acts instanta- 
neously throughout space. Therefore the gather- 
ing of any one center as a sun, would necessitate 
the gathering of every central sun in relative 
accord. 

5. Gravitating centers account for centripetal 
motion only. Acted upon by gravitation alone, 



90 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

all matter within each system would start for the 
center direct. Hence, centrifugal force also must 
have been imparted to all that portion of gaseous 
chaos, destined to become planets. With these 
two forces acting upon them, they would naturally 
assume the shape of an immense ring about the 
sun. Those gases destined to make our sun, 
must have traversed a space of not less than 
twenty trillion of miles ; possibly, in some direc- 
tions thirty trillion of miles. The center would be 
small at first; and should these gases float thirty 
miles per hour, it would take ninety million of 
our years to gather the sun complete. In such 
condition, from the voids of space Moses beheld 
our system, and noticed that the u waters above 
the firmament were not separated from the waters 
beneath.'' If from a tall mountain we behold 
a rainbow, when the sun is quite low we shall see 
a complete circle of prismatic colors. If one 
should report that the colors above the firmament 
were not separate from the colors beneath the 



UNDERSTOOD BY BIBLE WRITERS. 91 

firmament, we should readily understand that the 
bow was continuous as a circle. Now imagine 
these colors tangible gases, and a sun placed in 
the center, and you have some faint conception of 
the grand objective view of the prophet, as he be- 
held the first morning of creation. The condition 
in darkness, unmeasured by time 3 he had called 
night. The condition in light, unmeasured by 
flight of years, he called morning. " And the 
evening and the morning were day first." The 
vision, from contemplating matter as divided 
into systems, now changes to prospective Earth, 
as yet without form. If the lack of form con- 
stituted its evening, then, when it gains a form, 
it will be its morning. The gases that were to 
form earth, then lay diffused in the firmament 
ring. 

6. A spark would unite a field of Hydrogen 
and Oxygen, and cause a division in the ring, as 
a new element much lighter, formed in space in 
the condition of superheated steam. Its lightness 



92 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

would cause it to evolve outside the ring, and 
take the form of a globe. " And God made the 
firmament," and he called it "heaven,'' which is 
the visible expanse of a half circle or sphere 
above our heads ; " and he divided the waters 
which were under the firmament, (the first, which 
was a tangible circle) from the waters which were 
above the firmament." The Earth is in form, but 
has, as yet, but two gases ; and these unite in 
steam. The second day of creation ends without 
a "footprint" for the unassisted geologists to 
trace. Well may Job refer man to the voice 
of the Lord for the wisdom of first cause and 
the early changes of matter. This newly formed 
firmament, or visible expanse, which, by figure of 
metonymy means a newly formed globe, differs 
materially from the ring substance of the sun, 
which gave rise to the term firmament. This 
second firmament is not made of tangible gases, 
nor is its appearance to dwellers on the earth con- 
tinuous. Hence, the making of this firmament is 



UNDERSTOOD BY BIBLE WRITERS. 93 

the objective description of the formation of our 
Earth as a globe. With a world of steam in 
globe form, the second age or day of creation 
ended. The matter, that gathered would con- 
stitute Earth, while floating in chaos was called 
evening. When the globe took its form, though 
only a world of steam, it was called morning. 
" And the evening and the morning were the 
second day." No measurement of twenty-four 
hour days had commenced yet. Having followed 
our globe out into space, the prophet now confines 
his observations to this single planet. He be- 
holds the outside liquifying, and he follows it 
into its present orbit. He made no mention of 
the " swaddling band," it took out of the ring as 
it passed back toward the sun. This had been 
well noticed by Job, as well as the manner of the 
first deposits. But he noticed the appearance 
of dry land ; and the introduction of terrestrial 
vegetation, and described them as cryptogam 
"having the seed in itself." He had followed 



94 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

the gathering together of the waters as a grand 
sea, and the inorganic deposits as a long evening; 
and now, to bring out a grand contrast, as morn- 
ing, he waited until the forests sung the praises 
of God's creative hand in bestowing life. " And 
the evening and the morning were the third day." 
But this vegetation grows in the veiled light, 
much as the gray of twilight. This twilight is 
the evening of the fourth day. Contrasting with 
it is pure sunlight. The Carboniferous age of 
the world cleared the air of these deadly gases, 
and let in the sunshine upon the earth. This 
was morning. In noticing this, he is reminded 
that this globe is occupying his entire attention ; 
and yet God made all the planets and suns of the 
heavens. So the source of light is again noticed 
and its proper name given to it, and the relation 
it sustains to our own time noticed and record- 
ed, "The sun to give light by day." In a similar 
manner the moon and the stars were all noticed. 
As vegetation had now arrived at its climax, 



UNDERSTOOD BY BIBLE WRITERS. 95 

Moses closed this age, making the cryptogam 
in the gray twilight the evening, and its contrast 
the gay flower basking in clear sunlight the morn- 
ing. " And the evening and the morning were 
the fourth day." 

7. Gases are combined into rock through the 
agency of air and water. There are three meth- 
ods of conveying or changing gas into rock. The 
first is by gases mingling directly with the water. 
This gave us the larger portion of sedimentary 
rock. For aught that science has yet discov- 
ered, the entire bed of primary granite was made 
in this manner. The second is by combining the 
gases by means of diatoms and polyps of the 
seas. These animals do not depend upon vege- 
tation, but draw their nourishment directly from 
the waters. Their remains constitute large por- 
tions of sedimentary rock. The marble and chalk 
are formed almost entirely of their remains, while 
all sedimentary rock this side the granite con- 
tains more or less of their remains, A third wav 



96 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

is by gases combining in vegetation. Anthra- 
cite coal is ninety-six per cent, carbon, combined 
through vegetation. 

8. It is evident that the days of creation were 
not given to mark an order of time. (1.) Cre- 
ation commenced before time. (2.) Without 
motion there could be no measure of duration. 
(3.) The fifth day includes all the fourth and 
part of the third ; and could therefore be no or- 
der of time. 

9. They were not designed to mark an order 
in the deposit of rock. All stratified rock, from 
the Gneiss to the Myocene deposit, is included 
in the fifth day. They do not, therefore, give a 
progressive order of deposit. 

10. They were designed to give two morn- 
ings of inorganic changes of matter, with two 
contrasting evenings ; two organic changes, as 
mornings of vegetation, with contrasting even- 
ings ; two organic changes, as mornings of ani- 
lPals, with contrasting evenings. These days are 



UNDERSTOOD BY BIBLE WRITERS. 97 

all spoken of as noting a beginning, a middle, 
and a close. The beginning and close are con- 
trasts. This mode of measurement may have 
been derived from Job 9: 9 — " Which maketh 
the Bear, Orion, and Pleiades." Here is Orion, 
marking the colure line of the Spring equinox at 
the creation of man ; the Bear, marking the same 
Spring equinox at the end of time ; and Pleia- 
des, marking the date at which these visions 
came to the prophet. Thus we have the begin- 
ning and ending of the human race in contrast, 
and a middle date of passing events. Thus, with 
Moses the vision of creation opens with the crea- 
tion of all matter, and the first day ends w r ith 
the morning of light. The inertia of rest in 
chaos intervened. The Earth, without form, and 
the Earth, in form, is contrasted, the second day, 
with a separated firmament of the sun interven- 
ing. In the third day, we have evening com- 
mencing with two gases in the form of a steam 
globe, contrasted with the waving forests of the 



98 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY 

Devonian age of geology, with the millions of 
years of deposits of inorganic substance interven- 
ing. The language explaining the fourth day 
seems to be about the sun, moon, and stars. But 
that these might shine in on the Earth, there 
was involved the idea of removing the Earth's 
" swaddling band," alluded to by Job. Hence 
the language involves an evening of twilight in 
which Cryptogams, as the beginning of Earth's 
vegetation, would contrast with the flowers bask- 
ing in clear sun light, while the slow process of 
how God caused the sun to shine in on the Earth, 
by working this dark band of gases ihto its crust, 
intervened. Nowhere is this rule seen so clearly 
as in the language pertaining to the fifth day. 
Here, the infusoria of the sea is made to con- 
trast with the whale ; while birds intervene. These 
diatoms began in the deposit of the Gneiss rock. 
The whale is found in the Myocene and since. 
The solitary reign of beasts is noted as evening, 
contrasting with the reign of God's people as 



UNDERSTOOD BY BIBLE WRITERS. 99 

" priests and kings unto God/' at the close of 
time. Intervening are the events of human his- 
tory. Thus, every day of the six is shown by 
contrasts. 

11. A general providence runs in law, evolv- 
ing progress as far as Nature's law is adapted ; 
but when Nature fails to meet any new want, 
special providence steps in, with additional forces 
to supply the deficiency. Space was an empty 
nakedness, and God created matter therein. Mat- 
ter was without form and void, and God started 
it in motion. Matter was without life, and God 
created the life. The beasts of the field were 
without a moral spirit. And God made man in 
his own image, blessed with immortality, and 
capable of attaining to eternal life. For farther 
particulars, see Sec. 4. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Phenomena to which allusions are 
so freely made in the " slx days of 
Moses," suggest certain scientific ne- 
cessities, REPLETE WITH GEOLOGICAL IN- 
FORMATION, WHICH DEMONSTRATE THE PRO- 
GRESSIVE work of God, for matter, in 

MATTER, BY AND THROUGH MATTER, AND 
ABOVE MATTER, TO THE END OF TIME. 

Two books give a revelation of God, Nature 
and the Bible. Except for purposes of intelli- 
gent connection, as a rule, the revelations of one 
are not repeated in the other. Revelation on the 
subject of cosmos is evidently intended to supply- 
parts, which nature is not adapted to unfold. 
Each stands as a part of a great whole; that the 
true student of nature may be thoroughly fur- 
nished with proper text books, which, when 
rightly understood, are conjointly harmonious, 



DISPLAYED IN THE SIX DAYS' WORK OF GOD. 101 

connected, and exhaustive. If man would at- 
tain even the faintest ability to measure the 
"footprints of God" in nature, or fathom the 
relation of first causes in creation, he can ill af- 
ford unacquaintance with either book. The Bible 
is given as a supplement to God's voice in na- 
ture. Creation, shown in harmony with the tes- 
timony of the rocks, confirms the testimony of 
Moses. The unsupported hypotheses of men 
have led some to deplore the " mistakes of Moses." 
A better acquaintance with both books will lead 
them, it is thought, at least to respect his great 
prophetic knowledge, in outlining creation's ori- 
gin and forces. 

Section 1. 

The Work of the First Day. 

1. The account, given in Genesis, of creation 
is in the form of an Epic Poem. As a treatise 
on any subject, it would be incomplete. Its de- 



102 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

sign seems to be to give, in the form of poetic 
suggestions, the connecting links to unite cre- 
ation with creation's God. For such a purpose, 
it is the grandest and most complete of all pro- 
ductions of the pen. Six of these days are 
marked by contrasts, u called evening and morn- 
ing" but the seventh is peculiar, having neither. 
The sixth is said to close God's labor with mat- 
ter. Unmeasured duration is, doubtless, the 
seventh. 

2. The " deep," when used in reference to the 
heavens, means immensity of space ; as : " dark- 
ness was upon the face of the deep." Darkness 
is the normal state of space. Not dependent on 
matter, it is eternal. Moses saw all matter 
created at once. God's work, as revealed here 
for matter, is in harmony with correlation of 
matter in science. 

3. By a beautiful figure of metonymy, poets 
speak of a part implying the whole. Such is the 
word " Earth," as first introduced in this produc- 



IN THE SIX DAYS' WORK OF GOD. 103 

tion. " And the earth (all matter) was without 
form." Inertia holds all in rest. An act, fiat, 
or work of God, above matter, is requisite, to set 
it in motion. " And the Spirit of the Lord moved 
upon the face of the deep." A system formed 
with a center of light is noted. All systems are 
members of this choir. 

4. Science would suggest, that, if a ponder- 
ous globe, as our sun, should gather in a field of 
gases, though trillions of miles in diameter, all 
gases, within its drawing sphere, must either go 
toward the sun, or be thrown around it in a cir- 
cle. Such was the ring of waters, or fluids, first 
called a firmament. A most minute directing 
of Providence is here suggested. It extended 
to each molecule of gas, and its appropriate 
place was determined. Before that grand move- 
ment of the Spirit of God, there was nothing 
with which to measure duration, and time had 
not commenced. No centers — no gravitation. 
No motion — no light or force. All this is sug- 



104 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

gested in matter " without form." Suns only 
had form at the close of the first day. As sys- 
tems revolved, measured duration might have 
commenced at the revolutions of suns about a 
grand center. One day at the sun would be 
twenty-seven of ours ; one year, eighteen thous- 
and of ours. This first day of creation may have 
been one hundred million of years. It included 
the length of these contrasts to a climax, dark- 
ness — light. The one reigning over all matter, 
the other forming from matter, under the di- 
rection of God. 

5. If the first is a literal day, so are the sev- 
en. If the first is poetic, so are the seven. That 
the first was not literal, is evident in that the 
" Earth was without form " as yet. Hence there 
was no twenty -four hour measurement. Day is 
also used to signify a nation's history. It is not 
that. It is also used to signify the life of an indi- 
vidual. It could not be that. " A day with the 
Lord is as a thousand years." It is evident that 



IN THE SIX DAYS' WORK OF GOD. 105 

Peter was merely hinting at the indefiniteness, as 
to time, of the Mosaic days. It remains, then, 
that it is a cosmological day, without exact meas- 
urement of time. It certainly includes all that 
period of chaotic darkness before time commenc- 
ed. Should these gases move across the radii of 
our system with the speed of light, it would take 
thirty-five days ; but should the gases move like 
an atmosphere in space, it would take more than 
ninety million of years to gather the sun. The 
greater probability is that these contrasted con- 
ditions of the first day, poetically described with- 
out any exact measurement, if measured, would 
extend through more than one hundred million 
of our years. 

Section 2. 

The Work of the Second Day. 

1. Creation includes not only the bringing 
into existence of matter, but all its undeveloped 



106 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

forces and changes. Revelation, upon this sub- 
ject, is suggestive, rather than exhaustive, of what 
we need above what Nature shows, to trace cre- 
ation back to God. The greatest difficulty in 
reading this poem understandingly, is in rightly 
rendering the phenomena noticed upon the sec- 
ond day. Figures of metonymy abound. As a 
rule, figures once used in prophecy are not chang- 
ed when used by another prophet. Hence, we 
may derive benefit by seeing how other prophets 
have used them. Job had made the gathering of 
suns at the creation of light a morning in fig- 
ure. Moses is about to use the same figure, and 
beholding the darkness of chaos preceding, he 
extended the figure to an evening preceding. 
This is the only day that pertains to light and 
darkness. The second day will be analogous in 
contrast. Whatever be the one, the other will 
contrast. The evening of Earth is given. " And 
the Earth was without form." The contrast will 
be the Earth in form, for morning. 



IN THE SIX DAYS' WORK OF GOD. 107 

2. To read these allusions understanding^, 
every sentence must be cosmologically analyzed 
in the light of our present knowledge of astron- 
omy, chemistry, philosophy, geology, and rheto- 
ric. There is a grand suggestion of progress, 
couched in the figure of morning succeeding even- 
ing. The morning of each day is a complete 
contrast to its own evening ; and yet the morn- 
ing of that day is only the evening of the day fol- 
lowing. The morning of the sun, with hosts of 
God's angels rejoicing, is only the evening of the 
prospective globe, upon whose disk shall be per- 
fected, in knowledge and true holiness, beings in 
God's own image. The sun has perfected his day, 
in which Moses beholds the evening of the second. 

3. He is looking at our system, as from the 
voids of space, as a whole ; with its gathered sun 
and its immense ring of prospective planets. It is 
now shown him that a change is to take place in 
the ring, which will result in the form of a globe. 
To that part of the ring he draws near. The 



108 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

first phenomenon noticed was a separation in the 
ring between the " waters above, and those be- 
low." The gases thus uniting in one substance, 
soon left this firmament ring of the sun, and had 
a firmament of its own, called heaven, or visible 
expanse. The Hebrew word translated " firma- 
ment " implies something tangible, and yet it 
was used to denote the visible expanse. 

4. The first firmament was composed of tan- 
gible gases or waters, so called ; the second is 
the expanse of heaven. The cause of the sepa- 
rated waters is seen in what follows. These 
fluids that evolved out, leaving the ring separat- 
ed, are now in a condition that they only have 
to be gathered together into one place to be a 
sea. It was then steam. The suggestion is 
that an immense field of oxygen and hydrogen 
had united by the spark which separated the 
ring, and as the union was superheated steam, 
it evolved out into the voids of space as a globe. 
It is plain then " And God made a firmament in 



IN 



THE SIX DAYS' WORK OF GOD. 109 



the midst of the waters," means he made a 
globe, from which the visible expanse is seen. 
The vision now places the prophet upon this 
globe, the changes of which will occupy his at- 
tention to the end. 

5. Whether any or all the planets were 
formed at the same time, we are not told. No 
allusion is made to them except an incidental one, 
on the fourth day, so that all things should be 
traced back to God as their Maker. If the 
union of two gases took out a segment of the 
ring, leaving it u separated," it would only be 
temporary, as the ring would close up again. 
Whether our planet was the first, third, or last 
formed, no mention is made. The vision is de- 
signed henceforth to unfold what we need to 
know of Earth, not found in nature. Our globe 
in chaos of gases, sweeping around the sun in 
the form of a ring, is evening, being " without 
form." Our globe in steam, having a firma- 
ment of its own, is in shape, and this is u morn- 



110 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

ing." Solomon must have given such an inter- 
pretation to the account of the second day. 
Prov. 8 : 27. Tracing the unmeasured age of 
wisdom, " Before the mountains were settled, 
before the hills, while as yet he had not made 
the Earth, when he prepared the heavens, I 
was there ; when he set a compass (or circle) 
upon the face of the depth." A globe of steam, 
possibly highly charged with electricity, revolv- 
ing in an orbit outside the ring of planetary 
gases, was all that constituted Earth at this time. 
"And the evening and the morning were the 
second day." 

Section 3. 

The Work of the Third Day. 

1. A globe of vapor in contact with the cold 
voids of space must condense or liquify. The 
beginning would be upon the outside ; constantly 
growing heavier according to bulk, it would 
work its way nearer to the sun. Having be- 



IN THE SIX DAYS' WORK OF GOD. Ill 

come a center of attraction, and coming back to 
the now closed-up ring, it would claim a portion 
of the same as an atmosphere. Increasing now 
its centrifugal force, it gained an orbit inside 
the ring, still drawing nearer the sun. Job's 
attention had been called to the earth's appear- 
ance in this "gathering" process. "When I 
made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick 
darkness a swaddling band for it." Moses began 
the third day as the globe began to condense. 
" And he gathered the waters together into one 
place; and he called the gathering together of 
the waters, seas." While the globe was in a 
condition of vapor, the waters were firmament 
waters ; and the word firmament answered very 
well for both globe and visible expanse. Hence, 
"God made a firmament' ' by figure; covered 
both. But as soon as gathered, there was a dis- 
tinction. Now only the expanse, holding yet a 
cloudy vapor, could be called firmament, or 
heaven ; and the gathered waters he called seas. 



112 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

2. Science claims that the present pointing 
of the pole of the Earth, and its inclination to 
the ecliptic, could not produce such a warm 
climate as the Earth once enjoyed. This fact, 
in connection with the Earth covered with ice, at 
a remote period of the past, confounds the mere 
seeker of cause in nature's laws. The ancient 
pole-pointing is sung by Job. According to his 
description of light and darkness, one pole of the 
Earth must have pointed directly to the sun 
throughout the year. And as that warm climate 
was uniform, it must have turned on its axis 
not only daily, but as does our moon in refer- 
ence to Earth, once over in its entire orbicular 
journey. Its enlightened hemisphere was never 
in darkness ; its dark hemisphere was never in 
light. According to Job's statement, both light 
and darkness were stationary. u Where is the 
place where light dwelleth? And as for dark- 
ness, where is the place thereof, that thou shouldst 
take it to the bound thereof, and that thou 



IN THE SIX DAYS' WORK OF GOD. 113 

shouldst know the paths to the house thereof?" 
All our deposits then hung as gases in the air : 
one-half of which science proclaims to have been 
oxygen. In the language of Solomon, the moun- 
tains before rising must have first " settled " in 
the sea. The psalmist saw that God spread out 
the earth upon the waters, that he founded it 
upon the sea, and established it upon the floods. 
Job saw that the very corner foundation stone 
was made to sink. Moses rushes the deposits 
all into the evening of the third day, to the ap- 
pearance of dry land. u And God said, Let the 
waters under the heaven (the new firmament) be 
gathered together unto one place, and let the dry 
land appear." Here are eighty miles deposit 
made in the sea, all of which came out of the 
air and water. During this time Moses says, 
" The Lord God had not caused it to rain on the 
Earth." " The plant and the herb of the field 
had not yet been made." 
. 3. With such a pole-pointing, only one end 



114 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

of the Earth could receive deposits, and the 
sun could take hold only of that end. Job al- 
ludes to a convulsion in which " The proud 
were shaken out of it, that the sun might take 
hold of both ends of it." 38 : 13. Before this 
change, " The waters were covered as with a 
stone, and the deep was frozen." Deposits are 
now made from the air at the rate of four hun- 
dredths of an inch in a year. At this rate it 
would take, possibly, eighty million of years to 
reach the surface. Our globe was never a rain- 
less planet. 

4. The allusion to its not having rained on 
the earth, is an allusion that the deposits were 
yet beneath the waters, until the " dry land 
appeared." Following the changes of organic 
life up to the time of the deposits of the " Old 
Red Sand Stone," where God spread out the wav- 
ing forests of the Devonian plain, he had found 
the fit contrast to the inorganic deposit of the 
evening. 



IN THE SIX DAYS' WORK OF GOD. 115 

5. The climate of the first part of the third 
day was chilled to the temperature of melting 
ice. The latter part was torrid. The equator 
marked the bound between perpetual sunlight 
and perpetual darkness. Along this equator a 
line of open sea would beat against a line of per- 
petual ice. The spray and vapor from the open 
sea, going south, would be rapidly converted 
into snow and ice, increasing the thickness and 
gravity of the ice. At length, breaking by its 
own weight, it would drift into the open sea- 
During the first part of this day, there was noth- 
ing to prevent this drift-ice finding its way to the 
very north pole. The sea, therefore, would be 
at a temperature of 32 degrees Fahr. 

6. After the deposits neared the top, and be- 
fore dry land appeared, the larger bergs were 
kept back, and tropical waters resulted, followed 
by the same climate upon the dry land, as it ap- 
peared. At the close of this day there existed 
many kinds of water animals, but they did not 



116 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 



form a suitable contrast with what Moses had to 
start with, as evening. These were inorganic de 
posits from the air. The organic deposits of the 
Devonian forests are the morning. " And the 
earth brought forth the tree, yielding fruit, whose 
seed was in itself (cryptogams) after his kind." 
' And the evening and the morning; were the 
third day." 

Section 4. 

The Work of the Fourth Day. 

Up to the Carboniferous time of deposit, the 
air had never been sufficiently cleared of its dark 
clouds of deadly gases, to admit sunshine on the 
earth. Vegetation had not reached a climax. No 
mention is to be made of animals existing, until 
this climax is reached. It will be reached when 
the sun shall have taken off the " swaddling 
band " of her childhood, and depositing the same, 
as coal, in the earth, shall give the earth a cloth- 
ing of flowers. Non-flowering plants are evening, 



: 



IN THE SIX BAYS' WORK OF GOD. 117 

the contrast will be the flowering plant in the 
sunshine. 

1. By figure of metonymy, again he traced 
the progress of deposits through the sun, which 
God had made, with the moon and stars. The 
labor of the sun to clear the atmosphere, calling 
for immediate help of God, was long and perse- 
vering. Poetically, the narrative is enriched by 
this elegant figure, in putting cause for effect. 
As now from the earth for the first time he be- 
holds the clear sunlight, he doubtless is remind- 
ed, that in mentioning the creation of this center 
of attraction in our system, he had given a name 
which indicated a specific property of the sun, 
viz, light ; whereas it also had heat and force. 

Now, calling it by a generic name, and remem- 
bering also that in describing the origin of Earth 
no mention had been made of the rest of the 
heavens, he incidentally mentions that God made 
them all, without attempting the individual histo- 
ry of either. His mission is to trace in progress 



118 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 



the contrasting changes of God's work in the 
Earth. And to his text he adheres. 

Since the sun is the only source of permanent 
natural light within our system, and since Moses 
had made light to contrast with the darkness of 
chaos in the first day, it seems strange that any 
intelligent reader should understand him to speak 
pf the bringing into existence of the great orb of 
light the fourth day. Shining in on the earth is 
all that is noted. 

2. Sir Charles Lyell, the great English geol- 
ogist, gives us the process by which sunlight was 
let in on the earth during the carboniferous age. 
This age corresponds to the fourth day of Moses. 
The dark band of gases intercepted the clear 
rays of sunlight, so that a somber hue of gray 
covered the earth, as in twilight. Vegetation 
must slowly do the work of depositing these gas- 
es, until diminished so that fire, or flame, could 
be supported. Such was the resinous and oily 
nature of all vegetation of that period, that a 



IN THE SIX DAY'S WORK OF GOD. 119 

stroke of lightning might set the world on fire, 
to burn for six months or a year. Some of the 
carbonated growth of the forests would be hidden 
away beyond the reach of flame. In this con- 
dition it would ripen into coal. But enough car- 
bonic acid would escape, to intercept the clear 
rays of the sun, and another period of deposit 
would set in. In the Nova Scotia coal mines, 
alone, he had noticed one hundred of these burn- 
ings, implying a long period of deposit between 
each. It is thus the long ages struggled, to ena- 
ble the sun to kiss the vegetation into bloom. 
The widely scattered coal beds of this period 
show that the whole earth was covered with a 
tropical forest. Large veins of this coal are 
found in Greenland, Nova Zembla Island, Tas- 
mania, and the Melville Islands. 

3. We have had subsequent periods of de- 
posits of carbon in forests that produced coal. 
But the coal formed since that age is generally 
soft. One short coal period occurred this side 



120 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

the great upheavals of mountains. This coal is 
found on the Pacific Coast, and yields only forty- 
four per cent, carbon. The best coal had its ori- 
gin before the flowers. In Moses' prophetic vis- 
ion of the work of the sun, he grasped certain 
points in the future of astronomy. 

4. He noticed the use an enlightened civili- 
zation would make of the motions of the heav- 
ens. He noticed the Zodiac divided into signs, 
and time measured by three clocks of nature, 
called " days, years, and seasons." The sea- 
son clock is by the precession of the equi- 
noxes, consuming 25,000 years in a circle. Mi- 
chael, the archangel, used this term in explana- 
tion of the " long time " that would elapse be- 
fore the final end. With the clear sunlight, 
the climax of vegetation was reached. Two in- 
organic mornings and two vegetable mornings 
have been noted ; two animal mornings remain 
to finish the work of God with matter. 

" And the evening and the morning were the 
fourth day." 






in the six day's work op god. 121 

Section 5. 

The Work of the Fifth Pay. 

1. The contrasts of evening and morning of 
the fifth day are found in the sea. The contrasts 
of the sixth upon the land. The evening of the 
fifth began with the " moving things of the sea," 
ending with the " whale." With the exception of 
the first day, the fifth must have extended 
through a much longer time than all the others 
put together. The contrast between moving 
diatoms of the Gneiss rock, and the whale of the 
Miocene in size, is apparent. But the contrast is 
in a higher sense. All this long period to the Ter- 
tiary rock, gave only egg-producing animals. 
This was not high enough in the scale of animal 
existence to have the next evening, which must 
begin with the fifth morning, to form a contrast 
with man. The type of the highest of mammals 
must be reached, and that in the sea. This was 
found in the whale. Beside, the whale is intimate- 



122 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

ly connected with the great geological change 
caused by the drift period. Here ninety-seven 
per cent of the previous animals of the earth be- 
came extinct. Following the drift, there came 
into existence nearly all the animals that now 
roam the Earth. This day, then, covers all the 
changes of the fourth, and most of the third ; and 
of course has nothing to do with a measure of 
time, or order of deposits. 

2. For aught we now know, the starting of 
animal life was in the time of the deposit of the 
Gneiss rock — here we find shells. From here 
onward was heard the voice of God, "Let the 
waters bring forth abundantly the moving crea- 
ture that hath life." This life, at first, was very 
simple ; and small as simple. It required only 
the nourishment derived from water for its sup- 
port. No animals of any considerable size are 
found until vegetables were furnished for their 
food. Those of the earlier period had to be pro- 
tected from the carbonated waters by a bony 



IN THE SIX DAY'S WOffcK OF GOD. 123 

covering or ivory scales. Scorpions, spiders, liz- 
ards and frogs might breathe the carbonic acid 
of the fourth day ; but no warm-blooded animals 
are known to have existed until after the sun 
shone in upon the Earth, as a fixture. 

3. Here Moses noticed the existence of 
" fowls of the air." In the ichthyosaurus he 
might have found the contrast in size, but not 
in type. 

4. He passed on down to the " whale as morn- 
ing." After the Carboniferous deposits, the 
tracks of birds and reptiles are found in the an- 
cient sands of the shores of the waters. Gi- 
gantic saurians and voracious fish ruled the sea 
for untold ages ; but as they all were oviperous, 
or egg-producing, they are ranked in the even- 
ing. Reaching the type of the ruling land ani- 
mals of the next day, Moses pronounced the 
morning with the whale. 

5. It remains a mystery, how any one know- 
ing anything about geology can find fault with 



124 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

the order of the Mosaic record. So far as 
Moses has mentioned order, it is : moving ani- 
mals in the sea, air animals, mammals. The or- 
der of science may be more explicit. Substan- 
tially it is protozones, mollusks, radiates, articu- 
lates, vertebrates, mammals. There is no con- 
flict, nor even deficiency. The term used by Mo- 
ses is designedly generic ; covering all moving 
creatures of the waters. The history of the 
rocks is in exact accord with the testimony of 
Moses ; and both verify common observation, viz : 
each kind of animal produces its own kind. 

6. The poise of the Earth to the sun was 
such as to give an ice-flow, whenever for any 
cause a great subsidence of the hemisphere took 
place. 

The largest happened when the last and high- 
est mountains were raised. As a consequence, 
the period called the Drift followed, when the 
reindeer made his home in the vicinity of Eng- 
land, Most tropical animals were destroyed. 



IN THE SIX DAYS' WORK OF GOD. 125 

A new race of placential mammals was to be 
introduced ; the type of which is found in the 
sea, able to endure the revolutions of the Drift. 
Hence the wisdom displayed in selecting this 
animal, as a representative of morning. 

7. The Scripture claim of special providence 
is in harmony with the defence of the same in 
science. Providence is general, when wrought 
out in due course of law ; special, when it is a 
power added to nature. Special providence is 
not a rule of action, but the exception. * Science 
claims this much in nature. I refer to the ad- 
missions of such men as Huxley, Tyndal and 
Darwin. Prof. Huxley says : u No scientist of 
the present day will venture the affirmation, that 
matter is eternal. Should one be found, his 
brethren would rise up in court, and object to his 
testimony, as he would be incompetent to testi- 
fy." If not eternal, it was created by God's spec- 
ial power. Prof. Darwin says : " Some of our 
brethren have tried by experiments, to prove 



126 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

spontaneous life from inorganic matter, but they 
have failed, and, from the nature of the case, 
they must ever fail." " There must have been 
a first life, I think five forms, I know there must 
have been one from which life could proceed." 
Special providence again is needed to start life. 
The same principle would apply as many times 
as the earth may have lost its living forms. Sir 
Charles Lyell would assure you that the fires of 
the Carboniferous period alone deprived the 
earth of all land and fresh water animals, plants 
and seeds, at least one hundred times. Yet it 
was supplied between each. Prof. Tyndal says, 
" Do you ask me ' May inert matter rise up and 
live ? ' I answer directly, 4 No, life must have 
been created.'" Here then in science are the 
Deists' endorsements of exactly what every en- 
lightened Christian believes in reference to the 
covenant of salvation. This is the doctrine of the 
science of today, viz : that " God made all mat- 
ter at one and the same time ; that by special 



IN THE SIX DAY'S WORK OF GOD. 127 

power he put all parts in motion at one and the 
same time ; that his eye is over all, ready to sup- 
ply what is needed above what the machinery 
of nature can perform." Carry out this princi- 
ple, and you have the manifestations of the true 
God in Jesus, and every Bible theory of the New 
Covenant. 

Section 6. 
The Work of the Sixth Day. 

1. Beasts, with a perishable spirit, are the 
evening of the sixth day. Man without* an im- 
mortal spirit is the morning. Here we shall find 
the grandest contrast of any of the six days. His- 
toric man is the morning, extending to the end 
of God's work, in reference to matter. 

Duration ceases to be measured at the close 
of this day. Solomon alludes to the contrasts 
found in this day. " Who knoweth the spirit 
of the beast, that goeth downward ; and the spirit 
of man, that goeth upward ? " For a long time 



128 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

these animals, without a spirit to be preserved, 
ruled the earth as kings, " without any one to till 
the soil." Jungles and forests, mountains and 
dales, lakes and caves, alike afford no facts incon- 
sistent with this statement of Moses. Should 
science ever confirm the existence of a race pre- 
historic, resembling man, it will doubtless be 
shown that they were not a contrast with beasts, 
and have no connection with our race. 

2. Our race undoubtedly sprang from Adam 
less than six thousand years ago. Prehistoric 
man, like evolution, rests upon the hypotheses 
of men, always unsafe ; but in this case unsup- 
ported by a well-attested fact. The former may 
claim the intuitions of that class of persons ever 
looking up the genealogy of Cain's wife ; the lat- 
ter has the common sense of the average man 
against him. Upon this subject, as upon every 
other upon which the Bible pretends to speak, 
" If they speak not according to what is written, 
it is because there is no truth in them." By spec 



IN THE SIX DAY'S WORK OF GOD. 129 

ial revelation man saw that by a special provi- 
dence of God, he caused the ground to become 
the mother of man ; and from this creation pro- 
ceeded, by the same special providence, a help- 
meet for man. She has ever proved herself the 
great help in the march of civilization. Facts 
show that man gloriously contrasts with the 
highest types going before. 

3. It is not yet a settled question that the air, 
for any number of thousands of years before 
Adam, was sufficiently cleared of deadly gases as 
to admit of human breathing. On looking upon 
the coal veins of Pennsylvania, we need no argu- 
ment to show that man could not have breathed 
the carbon that hung in the air of that period of 
deposit. The mute faces of the coal beds of 
Ohio forbid man's existence then, although these 
succeed the former by millions of years. Geolo- 
gists agree that the Pacific deposits of coal have 
been this side of the great upheavals of the large 
mountains. If man had been living then, the 



130 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED 

carbonic acid of the air would have strangled the 
life out of him. When we take into consideration 
how very slowly a continent rises, out of the 
ocean, and that both the Atlantic and Pacific 
coasts had to rise over five thousand feet to ex- 
pose their fruitful valleys ; and also how very 
long a period had to elapse after, before the air 
would be laid into the ground by vegetation, we 
shall readily see the force of this proposition, 
viz : The very calculations which science has 
given us bring the deadly gases very near to the 
time given in Genesis for the creation of our pres- 
ent race. 

The volcanic periods of the world's history 
argue against the early habitation of the Earth 
by man. Every volcano is a vent for the escape 
of deadly gases, caused by the consumption of 
oils and coal in the Earth's strata. The enormous 
quantity of coal consumed is but faintly indi- 
cated by the amount of ashes thrown out. The 
mountains give evidence of recent volcanic dis- 



IN THE SIX DAY'S WORK OF GOD. 131 

turbance, greatly exceeding the present. Ancient 
river beds are found into whose channels the de- 
bris of the mountains had been dragged by the 
great ice-flow, until leveled over to the height 
of several thousand feet ; then the volcanic era 
covered, in places, this drift fifty or sixty feet 
thick; thus preserving the silt from being 
dragged away, as the waters receded. The fact 
that we had a coal period following, shows that 
man in the volcanic period, and for thousands of 
years after, could not breathe the air. Our active 
volcanoes are reduced to about three hundred. 
Still the air is polluted in many ways. Smelting 
works, forges and gas plants all pollute the air. 
Every cesspool, every whiff of burning tobacco, 
adds its quota to air-corrupting. Each year con- 
tributes to deposit a portion of the remaining 
carbon of the air. Rich valleys of warm zones 
are not yet healthy. We still go to the mountains 
for invigorating air. 

5. Evidently, we have not yet reached the 



132 THE NEPTUNIAN THEORY DISPLAYED. 

climax of good breathing air. Nature discour- 
ages the thought, that man could have continued 
his race, in any time, much previous to that 
given for the creating of Adam. The morning 
of the sixth day is in progress. Prophecy pre- 
sents the coming man greatly improved over the 
present. " My Father worketh hitherto, and I 
work." 

6. This morning ends, when the angel stands 
one foot upon the land, his right hung over the 
sea, with his left hand pointing to heaven, pro- 
claiming that time shall be no longer. " And 
God rested from all his labor." 



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